Material Witness
by Polly Lynn
Summary: "Kate . . . I have . . . half a closet full of things I never gave you. A couple of drawers. I think maybe one of the storage lockers downstairs. Full of things I never gave you." A series of (usually episode-based) linked one-shots exploring gifts that Castle never gave Beckett. Each chapter is more or less an independent story.
1. Prologue

Title: Material Witness—Prologue

Spoilers: Set at the end of Secret Santa (5 x 09)

A/N: So this happens to be berkielynn's fault, primarily. It's KIND of Muppet47's fault, as the idea came from the epilogue to "Silent Night, Ferret Night," which was inspired by the "Waiting Game."

Astute readers will note that this prologue is, in fact, a very slightly modified version of the epilogue to "Silent Night, Ferret Night." The diabolical berkielynn, in reviewing that epilogue, casually said, "Though now I find myself wondering what all these things are that he's bought for her over the years . . ."

So the idea is that this open-ended series will explore the contents of Castle's closet. The chapters will, hopefully, stand more or less on their own as (usually) episode-related one shots, but I'm going to experiment with posting it as a single story with multiple chapters in the hopes that things will be easier for readers to keep track of.

I would, of course, love feedback on the stories, but any thoughts on this format versus independently posted one shots that would read as "complete" would be appreciated.

* * *

Kate smiled quietly and sipped her cooling cocoa as Castle traded jibes with Martha and Alexis. She nudged him with her knee and nodded to his daughter, whose eyelids were drooping. Castle nodded back and smoothed a palm over her calf.

He reached his other hand out to tug on a lock of red hair. "Tired, pumpkin?"

"Mmm." Alexis shifted to rest her head on his shoulder. "Yeah, but Kate has to . . . " Her mouth dropped open in an _O _and she blushed to the roots of her hair.

"Oh, I . . ." Kate stammered.

Castle wrapped an arm around each of them and squeezed. "Right. Kate definitely has to."

He pushed up from the couch and retrieved a plain white box, a little wider than his palm and several inches high, intricately wrapped with a silver ribbon.

Kate took the box and looked up at him with narrowed eyes. "What happened to 'I didn't get you anything'?"

Castle just shrugged and tapped the box.

She alternated between tugging at the knots and shooting him suspicious looks. She was annoyed. And pleased. He was pretty sure about that. And annoyed at being pleased. She was altogether delicious. Castle made quick revisions to Operation Snatch and Barricade. Most of her consonants were back and he had high hopes for a speedy tongue recovery.

The thought did away with the last of his patience. Castle grabbed the box from her and pulled hard enough to snap the ribbon. He dropped it back in her palm with an innocent look and accepted a well-deserved jab from her and a scandalized "Dad!" from Alexis.

Kate eased the lid off and peered inside. It was . . . hideous. A tiny vinyl horse with a shock of magenta hair. Its tail was streaks of the same color mixed with deep purple. The left half of the horse was also deep purple, peppered with threats in word balloons, lightning, and purple flames-a super villain. The right side was mostly neon green, the "costume" a simpler, cleaner design with a single comic book hero promise reading: "I'll save you!"

Kate's mouth opened and closed. "A . . . My Little Pony?"

"A _collector's _My Little Pony," Castle corrected. "I told you I was serious about the pony."

Alexis leaned in curiously. "I thought _I _was getting a pony," she pouted.

"Don't be greedy, Monster Feet." Castle kissed her cheek.

He turned back to Kate and blinked. Something about the way she was looking at him made his heart pound. He wasn't sure if it was in a good way or not.

"Kate?"

She made him wait. One beat, then two. He didn't know which way that was edging him.

"Thank you, Castle." She slid her fingers behind his neck and pressed her lips to his cheek. "Thank you."

"You're . . . welcome?" Castle's voice climbed without his permission.

Kate's smile took a decided turn for the satisfied.

* * *

"You didn't get me anything."

Castle jumped and whirled around. He hadn't heard the bathroom door open and he would have sworn she hadn't cast a reflection in the mirror.

"Kate! It might be a while before it's a good idea to sneak up on me. Still having ferret issues. And Esposito issues," he added, wincing at the dark streaks creeping into the bruise on her jaw.

"You didn't get me anything," she repeated.

"But I did," he said nervously. He gestured into the low light of the bedroom. "Pony!"

She eased herself up on to the counter, her long, bare legs dangling from under the hem of one of his t-shirts. She suddenly seemed to find the floor fascinating. "How long have you had it?"

He thought about playing dumb. He thought about hedging. But even without the glögg disadvantage, what would be the point? She'd break him. She'd always break him.

"Three-ish years?" It wasn't quite a smile, though it was trying to be. His heart was still pounding and the jury was still out on whether that was good or bad.

"And it . . ." She nodded her head like she'd just decided something. She had. She'd decided to fix him with the world's most piercing stare. "It was for me. You got it for me."

"I got it for you. It's from Comicon. You were still so . . . . you were mad at me. And I missed you. And I didn't know how to make . . ." He ground his teeth. "I didn't want to admit that it was my fault or do the work to make it right. Or accept that maybe I could never make it right. So . . . pony."

"But you never gave it to me."

"I never gave it to you," he repeated faintly. He reached out and hooked his pinky around hers. "Kate . . . I have . . . half a closet full of things I never gave you. A couple of drawers. I think maybe one of the storage lockers downstairs. Full of things I never gave you."

"Why?" She was not letting up on the piercing stare. The needle on the heart-pounding gauge swung wildly back and forth.

"I have . . . more storage space than a metrosexual, a teenager, and an actress could possibly need?" He tried out a lopsided grin, half-bracing for a jab.

"Castle . . ." Her eyes dropped again and the needle lurched into "bad" territory.

"Kate, they're not . . . most of them are silly. And small things, mostly. Some are from when I hurt you. Or I wanted to help and I couldn't." He stepped closer and let go of her pinky to slide his hand up to her shoulder. "But most of them are just things I thought you'd like or things I wanted to know if you'd like. So I bought them, because I could, and because I like to. And because I hoped."

"Hoped?" She turned her head to kiss the heel of his hand.

"I hoped there'd be a right time to give them to you. And now there is." He leaned his forehead against hers.

"Now there is," she breathed and touched her lips to his. "But you still didn't get me anything for Christmas."

Castle froze.

_Oh, nefarious, Beckett, _he thought. _Nefarious._

He laughed and tugged at her hands, pulling her down from the counter and backwards into the bedroom. She laughed, too, and came willingly. They stumbled together, a tangle of clumsy limbs and sloppy, careless kisses.

Castle's calves hit the edge of the bed and he let himself fall backwards, taking her with him. Kate yelped when he pushed at her shoulder and pulled at her waist and suddenly she was on her back and the kisses were a little less careless, a little less sloppy

"I still didn't get you anything for Christmas," Castle murmured against her ribs. He nipped at her skin, then pushed himself upright. He braced himself over her and gave her a wicked smile. "I didn't get you anything for Christmas, and you love me anyway."

Kate grinned. She wound her arms around his neck and pulled him to her. Another laugh filled his mouth, and then her words.

"I do, Castle. I do love you anyway."


	2. Serious About the Pony, 2 x 01

Title: Material Witness—Serious About the Pony [Set during Deep in Death, 2 x 01]

Summary: "He's angry when the idea strikes him. When he remembers, and it suddenly seems like the perfect thing. Yes, he wants to make it up to her. Whatever she thinks there is to make up, however he _can_ make it up, then fine, he'll do that. But he wouldn't mind twisting the knife a little in the process. And it's the perfect thing."

Spoilers: A Death in the Family (1 x 10) and Deep in Death (2 x 01)

A/N: So this happens to be berkielynn's fault, primarily. It's KIND of Muppet47's fault, as the idea came from the epilogue to "Silent Night, Ferret Night," which was inspired by the "Waiting Game."

In that epilogue (which I've co-opted and modified a bit to act as a prologue to this series of linked stories), Castle reveals that he didn't get Kate anything for Christmas, but he has 4 years' worth of presents tucked away that he's never given her. Enter the diabolical berkielynn, who casually says, "Though now I find myself wondering what all these things are that he's bought for her over the years . . ."

So the idea is that this open-ended series will explore the contents of Castle's closet. The chapters will, hopefully, stand more or less on their own as (usually) episode-related one shots like this one, but I'm going to experiment with posting it as a single story with multiple chapters in the hopes that things will be easier for readers to keep track of.

* * *

He's angry when the idea strikes him. When he remembers, and it suddenly seems like the perfect thing. Yes, he wants to make it up to her. Whatever she thinks there is to make up, however he _can_ make it up, then fine, he'll do that. But he wouldn't mind twisting the knife a little in the process. And it's the perfect thing.

It seemed like the perfect thing when he first saw it. Over the summer when he'd think of her at the most inopportune times. But he didn't buy it then, because he doesn't buy her things (except he does—all the time). Because she's not the kind of woman you just buy things for. And because he was angry.

Now he can't shake the idea, and his bid is up to something truly ridiculous. He can't shake the idea that it's perfect, even though he's still angry.

She's being completely unreasonable. It's been months, and she's _still _being completely unreasonable.

Unreasonable isn't the right word. He could pick at unreasonable. He could find loose threads to pull. Cracks to widen and loopholes to slip through. But she's not unreasonable: She's _non-_reasonable.

She won't talk to him.

Before this morning, she hadn't said a word to him since May. Not a single word. Even then, when he told her what he'd found—what Clark had found—she hadn't said a word. She hadn't even _listened _to a word. Just walked away without a second look.

Maybe he should be grateful for that. The first look was bad enough. The first look was _awful._ Sometimes he thinks he stays angry just so he doesn't have to think about it.

She has the file. He knows that she got it, though it took some doing to verify that someone had actually put it in her hands. That she'd actually accepted it, even though it was obviously from him.

And she still has it. Esposito confirmed, though that cost him. She has it. It's in her desk and she looks at it sometimes. The envelope, anyway. He has no idea if she ever even opened it.

She must have. He thinks she must have. Otherwise, why keep it? Except to prove a point. Except to prove that she could have it right there—the possibility of answers always _right there_—and not look.

That's absolutely something she'd do. Or he thinks it is. He thinks that's something she'd do, but he doesn't really know. Despite notebooks overflowing with her—folders and files and backs of envelopes and cocktail napkins—all of them absolutely overflowing with vignettes and dialogue and character sketches and _her, _he really doesn't know. It infuriates him. She's infuriating.

She still won't talk to him. Not really, even though Montgomery is making her play nice. Her version of nice. Which, it goes without saying, is infuriating.

It should be satisfying, the fact that she _has _to talk to him now. The fact that he was finally able to do an end run around her. But he wasn't lying when he said it wasn't his idea.

It's so much worse than that: He had tried to talk the magazine out of it. The perfect opening and he'd tried to talk them out of it.

It feels like cheating, and that makes him angry, too. The very fact that he thinks of it that way, let alone cares whether or not it's cheating.

He's used to getting what he wants, and he's not particular about how it happens. About who makes it happen.

Six months ago, he never gave a second thought to picking up the phone and getting the mayor to fix it so he could shadow her. And if he thought twice about roping Esposito in to getting his hands on her mother's file, he doesn't remember. But now—with her—it doesn't matter how angry he gets about it. It feels like cheating.

He has to change her mind. He meant that, too—that he wouldn't try to weasel his way back in. He meant it. He won't cheat. That makes him _really _angry because he's afraid he can't. What if he can't change her mind?

The bidding is now well past ridiculous and quite a ways down the road to something he doesn't have words for, but he keeps on with it. He ups the amount and ups it again and he can't take his eyes off the screen.

He has to change her mind and somehow this is part of it. Somehow it's perfect. He has to change her mind and it starts with showing her: He was serious about the pony.

* * *

Ryan bet against him. He can't believe it. Ryan does not get a pony, even if he could get another one, which he can't. He's already getting death threats from a collector who thinks he cheated. Like he's to blame for the fact that he got bored and the site allows bids with no ceiling.

It bothers him more than it should. Ryan, not the demented pony collector. She's someone else's problem even though she seems to have the number for his personal cell and a surprisingly rich vocabulary when it comes to dismemberment of the human body.

But Ryan's betrayal bothers him more than it should. That's not hard. It shouldn't bother him at all, because who cares what Ryan thinks? Who cares if Ryan is the romantic and the eternal optimist? Who cares if Ryan bet against him?

He'll change Beckett's mind. He's already changing her mind.

She called his family. That has to mean something. Something other than the fact that he's kind of a jerk who probably should have thought of that.

But he's not used to it. He's not used to his mother looming so large in daily life. He's not used to his kid not really being a kid any more. Sure, she reads his books and they hash out cases over Lucky Charms, but that's all made up. The books, not the cases. And anyway, he keeps that stuff from her. Anything that's too real. He builds up the spine-tingling suspense and downplays the danger, and isn't that what any father would do?

So maybe _Beckett _is the jerk. Scaring his kid half to death. Rubbing it in her face that he might not come home some day. That parents don't always come home.

_Shit. _So, yeah, his kid's not a kid any more and he's the jerk here in more ways than one.

Ryan was probably right to bet against him.

* * *

Flowers won't cut it, whatever Cannell thinks. Not with a woman like her. He knew that even back at the beginning. He thought about it. Back in May he thought about it, but what color roses do you send with photos from the scene of her mother's murder? Photos she begged him to stay away from.

No, she's not the kind of woman to be swayed by flowers, even it were a flower-giving offense.

She _is_ apparently the kind of woman who will take off her pants and storm a den full of gangsters to save his ass. To make sure that he goes home to his kid tonight. They probably haven't decided what color roses you send for that, either. Not that it matters. Flowers won't cut it.

He has the pony. Had it messengered over from the seller and it's burning a hole in his pocket right now. But she's breaking the news to the vic's wife and it's not really the time for a joke and a silly gift. Even if it is perfect.

It might never be the time. He still hasn't figured her out. Part of him thinks she'll laugh to hide the fact that she's secretly pleased. That she'll think it's perfect, too. Part of him thinks she'll drag the story out of him and give him hell for how stupidly out of hand the auction got and set it up across the stapler from her little troop of elephants.

Part of him thinks that she'll take him back.

The other part of him knows she won't.

He still thinks it's perfect, but it's not the time.

It might never be the time.

* * *

He's still angry. Or angry all over again. Whatever. And not just because he lost. That's not what this is about. Or not _all _this is about.

It's the _way _he lost. Because he didn't really lose. He changed her mind. He knows he did, even though she yelled at him and twisted his ear and told him—at length—what an idiot he was for deviating from the plan. He changed her mind.

But she's back to being unreasonable. Probably back to being non-reasonable.

And he won't cheat. He's had the phone in his hand a dozen times already tonight. He's had the mayor's private line dialed up and his thumb hovering over the button. And he can't do it. He has no idea what that's about. He'd call it guilt, but he has nothing to feel guilty about. Not really.

But he won't cheat.

He's writing. At least there's that.

Even that makes him angry, though. It's all coming fast—_fast_—words and images and pivotal moments. He's working a notepad and the laptop and a voice recorder all at the same time because he can't keep up. He's exhausted already and he can't keep up.

But as fast as it all comes, it nags at him. It nags at him and he's angry.

It's good. Even rough like this, it's good. He likes what he's doing with Rook. He's proud that he has Raley and Ochoa down to a tee. Yeah, he's so proud of Roach that he's had to be ruthless. Had to cut their scenes back and store the scrapped parts in a notebook just for them. He'll mine that later. He'll mine it for the series as he goes along.

They'll want a series. It's _that_ good.

And then there's Nikki.

She's good, too. She's _great, _actually, and he's half in love with her already. That's nothing new. He's always a little in love with his characters. Sometimes more than a little.

But it nags. Even though she's good, it nags. She _is_ good—maybe better than any female character he's ever written— but she's still like a shadow. What comes out is like a shadow of what's burning bright in his mind.

He has the outlines. He knows what her days are like and he can hear her voice, but it's like an echo. He doesn't quite know how she moves and he can't see the shape of her mouth at rest. He doesn't know how she hides her scars. Or if she hides them at all. Who she hides them from and why.

He doesn't know what kind of woman she is and what kind of woman she's not and that pisses him off.

He's angry.

* * *

He changed her mind. Or she changed it without him. He doesn't exactly feel like he was integral to the process. Not at first, anyway.

He'd gone to the precinct to . . . well, he didn't really know why he'd gone or what he'd intended to do. Because he knew she'd be there, he supposes. Because he had to do something. Because he'd gotten advice from a teenager. A smart, inexplicably well-adjusted teenager, but still . . .

So he'd gone with the pony in his pocket and some half-baked plan for an apology. Maybe a walk-off joke as he handed it over.

And then there she was. In the shitty fluorescent light of a quiet bullpen, just looking at him, steady and wordless. He heard his own voice coming out of him like a stranger's. An apology. And he meant it. There was nothing eloquent about it. It was clunky and not the half of it—not the half of what he suddenly thought he should be saying—but he meant it.

And she changed her mind.

He takes the pony out of his pocket. He turns it over and over in the palm of his hand.

It's perfect, but it it's not the time.

He finds the box it came in. Plain white cardboard. A small rectangle with a hinge top, like a florist's box for a corsage. He sets the pony inside and taps it gently on the nose. He says good bye out loud. He feels like an idiot but he's still talking. He's saying good bye for now and more than that.

He says that he'll see her tomorrow and maybe that will be the time. Then he says that he doesn't think so. That it won't be never, but he doesn't think it'll be soon.

He closes the box and sticks a silver seal on it. His initials in calligraphy. It's ridiculous and overblown, but well . . .

He roots around in the desk until he finds what he's looking for: A roll of narrow, silver ribbon. He winds it around the box. Back and forth and across. Back again along the diagonal. He lets his hands work. Weaves a pretty, complicated little design until he's satisfied.

He snips the end of the ribbon and ties it off. He sets the box on the edge of the desk and admires his handiwork. He'll put it away later. Slide it home on the closet shelf along with the others.

For now, it's nice to have it there. To know that it's perfect and it will keep.


	3. Summer on Your Skin, 2 x 24

Title: Material Witness—Summer on Your Skin

Summary: "He buys it on a rainy day long before he even asks her. Before it ever comes up in any serious way. Serious on his part, though she doesn't seem to realize it. Sometimes he thinks she's working pretty hard not to realize it. Other times her cool dismissal seems honest enough."

Spoilers: Set primarily during A Deadly Game (2 x 24)

A/N: Second story in this series prompted by the diabolical berkielynn.

This gift suggested by the reality that as the Serbo-Croatian uber-hybrid, Stana has a moral obligation to bring hats back into fashion. I'm just doing my part.

* * *

_2010_

He buys it on a rainy day. Cold and blustery and unseasonable. The kind of day that makes summer seem like a rumor. The kind of day he usually hates, especially this deep into spring.

He loves summer. The long light and the way it bakes into the city sidewalks. Heat rising up from the pavement, deep into the evening. He loves the sighs and half-hearted complaints as it twines around bare ankles. Coaxes people into the streets and invites them to linger.

Later, he loves leaving the city behind. Usually, he loves that. He hasn't always, though.

Just out of college, he couldn't bear it. Too many summers spent trailing around after his mother through nowhere summer stock towns, the ruins of one year behind him, some new unknown gaping ahead. And in between, nothing after nothing after nothing—towns and plays and people whose names he barely bothered to learn.

So he stayed in the city those first few summers. Drank in the heat and fed off the energy. Loved the anonymity and the driving pace and the fierceness of it all.

He bought the first Hamptons house on a whim. An impulse to have something—to make something—for his daughter. A counterbalance for Meredith's grand plans and dismal follow-through.

It was a pit. A tiny pit with bad insulation and leaking pipes and iffy wiring, but he loved it. They both loved it, and it was everything they needed. A kitchen and a couple of bedrooms to tumble into, exhausted from long days on the beach.

He loved it and hated to see it go, but it was time. Paula had been bugging him about it for a while. Some mixed metaphor about dressing for the house he wanted. But it was really about Alexis again.

There came a point when they couldn't just go to the beach any more. He couldn't just let her scamper off with some other family, thinking she'd made a fast friend made in the space of one afternoon. Too often they'd both find at the bottom of it a weekend wife more interested in chatting him up and not ashamed to use her kid to make it happen. Privacy was something they needed all of a sudden. Privacy and space as his little girl doggedly insisted on growing up. Growing into her own person. He could buy that for them, so he did.

He loves the second house, too. The one he has now. He loves it in a different way. It's over the top. Too big and too much. It satisfies the kid who slept on dressing room floors in stuffy theaters, the air thick with the scent of cheap flowers, fading fast.

But he loves the quiet, too. How quiet it can be and the way he can shut the world out. He loves all its cavernous spaces in their infinite variety. The way he can just pick up and move from room to room, never seeing another soul if he doesn't want to. A change of scenery when writing makes him restless.

He's always loved the potential for solitude in that house. Now he worries about loneliness.

* * *

He buys it on a rainy day long before he even asks her. Before it ever comes up in any serious way. Serious on his part, though she doesn't seem to realize it. Sometimes he thinks she's working pretty hard not to realize it. Other times her cool dismissal seems honest enough.

It's ridiculous. And beautiful. It's not a vintage piece, but it could be. It captures that certain something from the forties. That perfect blend of masculine and feminine—whiskey-colored straw in a tight, stiff weave with a brim wide enough to droop just a little at the edges. A red grosgrain ribbon around the deep, softly curving crown, bright and warm as a poppy. Gorgeous.

It comes in a bandbox. An actual bandbox—glossy black and white vertical stripes and a smart handle of black braided silk. It's ridiculous and it delights him.

He lies to the sales lady as she places it on a bed of tissue. She drops the lid on and taps it in place. She compliments him on his taste and asks about his special someone. He lies to her. Says it's a joke—his daughter is thinking about abandoning him for the summer and he wants to give her a taste of what she'd be missing. A taste of sun and cool, salt-scented night air.

The lie comes easily, though he's not sure how. He's not sure how when he can see her in it. When it's all he can see. The brim dipping low over her forehead, giving shelter to her skin while the sun climbs high over the ocean. Blotting it out to throw half her face in shadow, leaving him with just the crimson swell of her lower lip to savor. He sees her tipping her head back, one elegant hand pressed to the crown as she drinks in late afternoon. As she welcomes the cool evening.

He sees her pulling the brim low. He sees her laughing at him—always laughing at him. One brow arched in challenge. One dark, dark eye giving off sparks.

The lie comes easily, but then he's in trouble and he has to hurry out of the store, the box dangling from his fingers and bumping his thigh as he stumbles out into the rain. The image takes him. He sees her in it. He sees himself manhandling her into his arms and kissing her senseless. Kissing her until she relents. Until she melts into him the way women always do in the movies.

He doesn't mind the rain the day he buys it. Summer seems far off and he's fine with that. He's fine with the idea that it might not come. That he might not leave the city. He might not leave her. She might come with him.

It must have been there from the start. The thought, buried in the back of his mind. From the first moment he followed that red ribbon around and around with his fingertip. The thought must have been there. That he might ask. That she might say yes if he did.

* * *

He asks.

She's humoring him about the whole thing. Or maybe she's not. Damned if he knows anymore. He asks anyway, with his heart in his throat, climbing and climbing when she doesn't say no. When she spins it out into one tease and another.

He asks again. Makes a promise that he doesn't think he means to keep. She says no then, but it doesn't sound like she's saying no to _him_. It doesn't sound like no at all, actually.

Later, he slides the bandbox out from under the bed. He lifts the lid and sees the scene play out all over again. He's in trouble all over again.

He wonders what he's doing. He runs his fingers over the brim and wonders what _she's_ doing. What she's doing whispering with Demming and not really saying no.

Unless she _is_ really saying no and the rest of it is all in his head. It's a possibility. He hates it, but it's a possibility.

* * *

He tells himself he's angry when it all comes out. Angry is better than mortified, so that's what he tells himself.

He doesn't believe it, though. Himself or her.

He's too hollowed out for anger. It blazes up now and then and dies in the empty, airless places inside.

And when has she ever spared him? When has a woman like her _ever_ spared a man like him? Not that there are women like her. Not anymore.

He doesn't believe her, but he doesn't have a better answer, so he'll go. He'll write and purge himself of her and learn to believe the lie. His or hers, it hardly matters.

He thinks about his own lie. The other one. The one he told on a rainy day. He thinks about making it true. He thinks about giving it to Alexis with a flourish. Loading her arms up with the enormous box and laughing as she pulls it out in a burst of tissue paper. He thinks about telling her she can change her mind any time.

But she's already worried that he might be lonely and he won't do that to her.

He _is _lonely and there's nothing for it.

But he doesn't give it to her. He doesn't make the lie true. Either one of them.

It's somehow in his hand when he goes to unearth the suitcases from storage. It's in his hand and then he's pulling down boxes and cases and furniture. He makes a hollow there—an empty place that waits—and he slides the bandbox in. He walls it back up again and goes.

He goes.

* * *

_2013_

She always packs the car because he's hopeless and she's tired of having to iron everything all over again. She's also tired of late night runs to the store for things he left sitting somewhere in the loft. So she packed the car this time like she always does and she really has no idea where the giant box came from or how he made space for it.

He plays coy. He dances it away from her, leaning back to kiss her shoulder as he makes his way past.

"If you left any of my clothes behind to make space for that . . . "

He stops on the doorstep and whirls around. The box spins and winds the handle around his fingers. It hovers a minute and unwinds, rocking back and forth.

His mouth drops open in consternation. "I wish I'd thought of that. Then you'd have to walk around naked."

She means to fix him with a hard stare, but he's already banging through door and charging up the stairs. And anyway, she's grinning. He's back a minute later "helping" her bring in the rest of their things, but his hands are all over her and it takes them forever to get things situated.

It's not really a beach day. Summer is taking its time arriving in New York. It's hazy and a little cool and they got a later start from the city than they'd intended. His fault again. Totally his fault.

She slips into her bathing suit anyway. She doesn't need the sun so much as the ocean air on her skin and time to just be.

He's disappeared somewhere in the house. God knows there are plenty of places to disappear. She slips her arms into a long cover up, scrounges up a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses, and slips through the glass doors out on to the porch. He'll find her.

She plants herself on the top step. He'll fuss about her being uncomfortable. About the endless parade of outdoor furniture she has to choose from. But it's not worth the trouble of dragging the table and chairs from the porch out on to the slope by herself.

And anyway the breeze is even sharper on this side of the house, though the sun is doing its level best to burn through the thin clouds scudding across the sky. This is close enough for now. She shivers pleasantly and sips her wine and watches the afternoon slip away.

He finds her before too long. She's leaning back on her palms, eyes closed and her face tipped up to the sky when she feels his shadow fall over her.

"You're in my sun, Castle," she says lazily, eyes still closed.

She senses him bending over her and arcs her chin up, anticipating a kiss. Instead, he settles something on her head. Her eyes snap open and her breath catches when she meets his eyes.

He's staring at her, awestruck. Light and heat underneath. She shivers again, head to toe, and a sharp comment dies on her lips. "Castle?"

"Gorgeous," he breathes and he reaches for her.

He pulls her up. Hauls her against him with rough, awkward hands on her spine, her shoulders, her neck. It's so clumsy and urgent she wants to laugh as he tugs her head back and she claps a hand to the top of her head. Then his lips are on hers and it feels like the world turns upside down.

They break apart, breathless, and his forehead bumps the brim of the . . . hat? The hat, she guesses.

"What was that?" she murmurs.

"Mmmmm. Something I've wanted to do for a while." He runs a thumb over her cheekbone and he has to stop looking at her like that or they're not going to make it back into the house.

"You _have _been doing that for a while," she laughs as she turns in his arms.

"Not long enough." He wraps his arms around her waist and ducks to fit his cheek against her shoulder. He watches as she studies her faint reflection in the glass doors. "Never long enough."

She runs a fingertip along the brim. Tugs it low on her forehead and tries out an exaggerated pout. "Castle, this is . . ."

"Gorgeous?" He nuzzles her neck.

"I was going to say ridiculous," she says faintly as she reaches a hand up to his cheek and presses closer.

"That, too," he grins. "That, too."


	4. Shine a Light, 3 x 24

Title: Material Witness—Shine a Light

WC: ~4500

Rating: T

Summary:

A night light. Boxy red with a single tulip-shaped bulb. It's the only one and he almost misses it. The woman waves it aside. It was an experiment, she says.

He wants it badly, but she's reluctant. She says it's cheating. Just passing on light like that is cheating. Borrowing, he tells her sharply. He's embarrassed then, but he can't help repeating it: It's borrowing, not cheating.

She won't sell it to him, but she lets him take it.

Spoilers: 3 x 24 Knockout; oblique references to 4 x1, Rise

A/N: Third story in this series. Berkielynn is still diabolical. I knew there'd be a night light. I didn't know it would play out this way.

* * *

_2013_

"It's the light." Kate's voice breaks the long silence.

Castle's eyes drift shut on a silent thank you.

Silence. It's his worst event by far, but it's what she seems to need most right now. What she thinks she needs. For now, that's what matters. When the time comes he'll argue with her. About rest and food and her own life. Their life, if he has to play dirty. But it's not here yet.

He brushes his hand through her hair. She arches her neck and presses closer to him. Lets him work his fingers down inside the collar of the shirt she's been wearing for at least two days.

His chest swells with it. Warmth and worry. She must be exhausted to lean on him like this. To let him comfort her here. Half a dozen knots of private grief scattered like islands, their own just one of them. But she lets him.

She lets him and he risks breaking the silence. Pulling her back toward him with words. "Light?"

"It's the worst thing. The worst thing about hospitals." Her head tips heavily against her own palm. Away from him, but not far. She's not just letting him. She's asking him and he answers. Slides his arm around her and presses his forehead to her cheek.

Castle catches a glimpse of them in a mirror across the room and he wonders why. Why a mirror. Why here? They look awful. Everyone looks awful.

"My mother would agree with you. I am _completely _washed out," he murmurs as he nudges her head in the direction of the mirror.

It gets a short laugh from her and a double take. She sees it, too, how awful they both look. It's more than just the light. She see it and files it away for now. It's not much, but he's grateful enough for it.

* * *

_2011_

He walks that day. It's stalling, plain and simple, though he tells himself that he's just enjoying the May morning. He is. He does enjoy it, whether that's why he's walking today or not.

He loves the way the city unfolds this time of year. The way everything stretches, tall and determined. The way the light of late spring lifts all of it up—everything up—and makes life seem possible.

It's early. Too early for the stalls that will clog the sidewalks and park paths a month from now. Two weeks from now. He keeps forgetting that it's closer to summer than he's had time to realize. The sun doesn't feel warm yet. It rises early and sets late, but he's still waiting for it to feel warm.

It's early but there are already a couple of go-getters out and about with their wares. Pedaling and pushing and pulling their carts and wagons and wheelbarrows, all of them loaded up with thick, brightly colored fabric. He stands by and watches a few of them set up. He loves the potential. The promise. Nondescript heaps of nothing emerging, fold by fold, into something. Into beauty.

He browses as he goes, but it makes him restless before too long. He doesn't know all the vendors by any means. They come and go all summer long, following the rhythms of fairs and festivals, openings and re-openings.

And even his well-worn paths are mostly a blur of suggestions. A loose collection of nudges carrying him this way and that. He's always taking a different turn. Crossing here instead of there. Letting himself be caught up in the ebb and flow of traffic in search of new sights and sounds.

But it all gets old after a while. It already feels old today. He's caught between restlessness and reluctance.

He wants to see her. He always wants to and it's sharpest in the morning. But this isn't just any morning.

He needs an opening line. He always needs an opening line. Even if he lets it go eventually. Even if he discards it once the next line comes and the next line, he needs that point of entry and he doesn't have it.

He's only half convinced this conversation is his to have. That he should be the one on the other side of it. That it's his place, whatever her father thinks.

He wants it to be. For his own sake, he wants it to mean something that it's _his _door Jim Beckett knocked on out of the blue. _His._ For his own sake, he wants badly for it to be his place and no one else's.

For her sake, he'd share. For her sake, he wants company there. He wants more than this fragile something between them to anchor her to this life.

It's the world to him. Whether or not he turns to face the ache that tells him that, it's the world to him. He doesn't know what it is to her. He only knows that it can't be all. It's not enough to save her and it can't be the only thing that keeps her here. If it is, he's lost her already. He never had her.

Restlessness wins out. Opening line or not, he wants to see her. He moves on. Lingers less at each stall. Even when the vendors are friendly, he'll just nod and move on. He can't find anything new to say about the same old things.

He puts his head down. He's turning his back on the park when something catches his eye. Color. Incredible color drinking in the sun and giving back more. _More. _He drifts toward the cart and nods to the shy young woman.

He's never seen anything like it. Like any of it. Even the familiar things are new somehow. On the outside—the first thing that catches his eye—it's just the usual sun catchers. Curves and right angles dangling from ornament hooks. Lead lines hemming in geometric expanses of color. But the shades are intense. Alive. They move and breathe and give back more than they take in.

He steps deeper into the stall and wonders why she's hiding these other things. Tall twists of light, dipping low and rising again. Even here—deep in shadow and far from the morning sun—they glow with a light and heat all their own.

He asks about them and the woman answers. Timid at first. Eager as she goes on. No one wants these things inside, she tells him. They're not familiar. There's nothing obvious to do with them. They won't hold flowers or wait for the afternoon light to come to them. Sculptures of a kind, she guesses, but not really. But she sees them in her mind and her hands bring their light into the world.

He nods and turns with her. Touches his finger to one figurine, then another. No one wants those, either, she tells him with a laugh. He can see why. The colors are muted and their hollow features lean toward the grotesque. They're beautiful, too, but it's the kind beauty that takes time to see. The kind that creeps up and catches you sideways with a sad story.

He's about to go. He's not surprised to find that he's already chosen a few things. He knew he wouldn't leave empty handed, but he almost misses it. A night light. Boxy red with a single tulip-shaped bulb. It's the only one and he almost misses it. The woman waves it aside. It was an experiment, she says.

She likes the character—a fire engine red robot with sad silver eyes—she points out his cousins in the neat rows of figurines, a hint of his own squared-off face in the corner of an abstract design. He wants it badly, but she's reluctant. She says it's cheating. Just passing on light like that is cheating.

Borrowing, he tells her sharply. He's embarrassed then, but he can't help repeating it: It's borrowing, not cheating.

She won't sell it to him, but she lets him take it.

* * *

_2013_

There's not much that's good about this having happened up here. In the city, there'd be experts and equipment and the illusion of control. In the city, someone might have found him sooner. Only might have, because that's not really how Jim Beckett lives his life.

Kate thanks him—thanks Castle—for how quickly the neighbor _did _find him. He's not a friend, but he's an acquaintance now, and he wouldn't have been even that if Castle weren't so pathologically friendly. Her father's had the cabin for years, but he packs and unpacks his life inside it. Takes it with him when he goes.

Castle blushes and burns under her thanks. He's grateful for the coincidence. Grateful that he can do _something _here, however unintentional. But it comes out of the unpleasant truth that they don't really get along, he and her father.

They're not on bad terms, but for two men who love Kate with such intensity, they don't have a lot to talk about. So he endures—they both endure—the occasional outings and the family weekends away. And they both make the best of it.

For Castle that means nosing around the small town. Getting to know people. Asking impertinent questions and counting on his charm to help him backpedal when he needs to. The neighbor had dropped by on the off chance Jim might know something about the new book and found him lying half out the front door.

There don't seem to be many trade-offs for this happening here. No small-town bedside manner or grandmotherly nurses anticipating their needs. It's cold and sterile and uncomfortable, just like any hospital. And she's right—the light is awful. The light is the worst.

The cardiac surgeon's frank conversation with Kate borders on brutal. Castle bristles when he says flat out that the prognosis is significantly worse given Jim's drinking, but Kate doesn't flinch. She lays a quiet hand on Castle's arm and asks questions. Lets him know in a few sharp words that she won't be talked down to.

The surgeon turns to go and Castle waits for her to fall apart. He's ready for it. Quiet and willing to follow her lead, but she surprises him. Like always, she surprises him.

She meets his eyes and there's annoyance there. Not grief. Not fear. Not much anyway. And six months ago he thinks he probably wouldn't have seen what little there is. She meets his eyes, tosses her head toward the surgeon's departing back and murmurs, "What a dick."

* * *

_2011_

He leaves it in her desk. Tissue paper and bubble wrap in a brown paper bag and he tucks it into her top right-hand drawer. It's not an oversight. It's not something he forgot, though he tells himself it is.

He leaves it on purpose and goes into the conversation unarmed. Without an opening line. He still doesn't know if it's his place. They think it is—her father and now Montgomery—and the narrative pulls him this way and that. Father figures and their seal of approval. It's compelling, but he won't leave their lives to the whim of a story. He still doesn't know if it's his place.

He wants it to be, and it's that truth clamoring loud in his ears that sends him her way. Without some plot device. Without some glib opening line or second-hand plea. He wants it be his place alone and he goes to ask her, empty handed.

It's no surprise when she sees through it right away. The excuse to show up on her doorstep. She sees through it and attacks.

There's a single moment when things could have been different. Might have been different. A single moment, but he panics. The words are past his lips—_the people that love you—_and it's like sheet lightning under his skin. It shocks every cell. He panics and says other men's names and it's over then.

Oh, it goes on. It goes painfully on, but it's over in that moment.

_What about you, Rick?_

That shocks him, too, but he's dull to it and all the possibilities are ashes now. All it can call up is anger in kind. It's out there in the open, laying them both bare, but it's over. It's already over.

She sets them up and knocks them down.

* * *

_2013_

They all think she should leave. Their friends. His family. Her family now, too, though it's not always easy or obvious. It's no less true for that. It's no less true that Jim is his family, whether or not they get along. God knows family isn't always about having something to say to one another.

They all think she should leave, and they want him to make her. They say he's the only one who can, and they might be right. They might be right, but he won't do it.

They all say sensible things. That Jim will need her more later. That there's nothing she can do now. That she has to take care of herself. Keep up her strength and be ready for when he's well enough to come home. If he's ever well enough.

The _if_ carries a lot of weight, but it's not why Castle stands guard over her. It's not why he weathers their well-meaning advice. Their insistence. It's not why he shields her from everything except well wishes and assurances that they're all keeping the home fires burning. It's not why he won't make her leave.

He won't make her leave because it makes a difference to her. Because the end will come suddenly if it comes. But it won't come with a silent drive that goes on and on and ends in a good-bye that happened without her. Not if he can help it.

He won't make her leave because she is practical and ruthless with herself in every other way. In every single minute of her life. He won't make her leave because there's a spark of little girl inside her who thinks that her staying _can_ make a difference. Because why things matter and the difference they make can't always be measured.

He won't make her leave because he wouldn't.

But the fact of the matter is Jim is not doing well. Castle supposes he ought to be grateful to the surgeon that they weren't blind-sided by that. Staying might mean throwing in for the long haul. He won't make her leave, but he has to make plans.

He broaches the subject carefully. Waits for her to break the silence and shows her that she needs things. Shows her that he can make arrangements. Have things sent along and taken care of. She nods and he's relieved. She makes a list out loud. Practical, sensible things for her. Scattered things, foolish things that she just wants. That she just wants her dad to have. She asks him to go.

She asks him to go and he freezes. It hurts. It hurts more than he thinks it should after all this time. She sees it and she's sorry and he's sorry, but they fix it. They fix it in a minute because she winds herself around him and tells him what she's really asking.

"Please, Castle. Go. Go so you can come back."

He points himself at the city.

* * *

_2011_

He doesn't forget about it. It's on his mind through everything. He's afraid the whole time and he would borrow light if he could. She must be afraid, too. She has to be so afraid, and he wishes he'd been brave enough to give it to her. Light to borrow. However silly it is, however absurd, he wishes he'd been brave enough in that single moment.

He doesn't forget about it, but somehow it's a surprise—a shock—the first time he finds it again. He's still hopeful then. It hasn't been that long and he's still hopeful.

He sits at her desk tugging open drawer after drawer. He's looking for a pen because he has something. He thinks he has something and he makes a mental note to buy her pens that don't completely suck. To buy the whole precinct pens that don't completely suck. The top right drawer sticks and he has to shove his hand in to press down whatever is holding things up.

He feels the give of bubble rap under the rasp of plain brown paper and jerks his hand back. He's still hopeful then, but something makes him take it home. Something makes him slip it into his messenger bag and give it safe passage.

It's midsummer when he breaks it. There's nothing in particular. Oh, there's probably the storytelling angle. Dates of significance that hang heavier than others, but it's nothing really. Nothing but the weight of thirty-four days and the last of his hope draining out of him in a rush. There's no particular thing that ends it, it's just over.

It takes time. It's not the work of a moment to unwrap. To unearth and extract it from its safe haven. It takes time and it's deliberate—a gesture, however pointless—when he dashes it against the brick of his office.

There's no one to hear it this time. They're gone—his mother, Alexis. Her, obviously. They're gone and he's alone. He sits there on the floor with the pieces in his hands for a long time. A long time.

* * *

_2013_

He calls ahead. It's a long drive and he sets things in motion and just hopes it's possible. His mother doesn't balk for once. She doesn't _Oh, Richard_, him. She finds the pieces in his desk and boxes them up.

It's Alexis who finds the woman. She walks the park all day and texts him a picture when she finally finds the cart. It's beautiful. The light is different—it's a different time of year—but it's just as beautiful as he remembers and he hopes.

She'll make another one, she says, but he doesn't _want _ another one. He loses it a little on Alexis. She lets him. Just gives him a quiet _Ok, Dad _and the next thing he hears from her is that it's happening. She'll fix it.

He makes the rounds. Her place and he's proud and happy that there's so little she needs from there. A book or two and some photographs. Things her dad gave her to fill the space when she moved in and had nothing. Literally nothing.

But the stuff of her daily life—the things that are essential—are at his place. Their place. He packs them up. Adds some things she wouldn't think to ask for. Things she'll like having. Her pillow. An old t-shirt of his that she slips into when she's sick.

He tells Lanie straight out that he won't make her leave. That's not why he's here. To her credit, Lanie limits herself to one hard look and then she's helping him figure it out. Suggesting things he'd never think of because he doesn't have her perspective. Her inside knowledge on how hospitals work and don't work. And a new set of things are in motion before he's on his way.

Everything takes longer than he thought it would and he's anxious to head out of the city. He only means to stop and pick it up from Alexis, but he sees her pale face and calls Kate before she sees him.

"Of course," she says. "Of course."

He tells her he'll still be there before morning. She tries to talk him into spending the night, but it's half-hearted. He says he'll be there before morning and she says ok.

He has dinner with Alexis. It was supposed to make her feel better, but that's not how it works out. She's smart—of course she is. That's not it. She's _knowledgeable_. She's learned a lot working with Lanie. In her classes. She knows things and she teaches them to him. Helps him see the whole situation, the things that have been half in shadow the whole time for both of them.

"You think I should make her leave. You think we should come home." It's the last thing he says to her. Almost the last thing.

She looks at him. She doesn't smile and then she does. "I think you'll bring her home when it's time. You'll bring them both home."

* * *

_2013_

He pulls over when he gets the text. He's more than half way there, but it's late and he has a sudden fear that it's something awful. That it's the end and she's alone.

_What did you do, Castle? _

He drops his head back against the seat and the breath rushes out of him. He's grateful. Suspects Lanie must have pulled strings he didn't know she had to pull. He didn't think it would happen tonight, but he's grateful.

He calls her.

"I pulled over," he says before she can read him the riot act.

She's quiet a minute. _"How far?" _

_Too far_. It's what he wants to say because there's so much in the space of those two words on her tongue. _Too far. _ But he looks at the GPS. "Another hour or so?"

"_Good," _she says and then. _"No news. Everything's the same." _

"Good. That's good." He's grateful she didn't make him ask. "Is it ok—the room?"

"_Yes," _she breathes and there's genuine relief there. _"I was . . . surprised. Small. And nothing here is quiet. But it's nice to have a door to close." _

"Good," he says quietly. "I'm gonna go, Kate. Be there soon."

"_Go,"_ she repeats. _"Go so you can come back."_

* * *

_2013_

He keeps his promise. Just barely. The sun rises early this far north, but he beats it. He finds the room and slips inside as quietly as he can.

She wasn't kidding about it being small. He could probably touch both walls if he stood dead center. But there's a real bed—bunk beds, actually—and a small bathroom. A rickety desk in the corner with a lamp she's left burning.

She's asleep in the bottom bunk. It's not deep. Her breath tells him that, but her eyes are moving under paper-thin lids and the circles underneath might be a little lighter. He crouches by the bedside a minute and watches her, thankful for even this much.

He unlaces his shoes and pulls them off. Sets them aside with careful, silent hands. He shucks his pants and shirt just as carefully and folds them on the desk. He lays a hand on the box and wonders if he should leave it for later. But he wants it there. He wants her to have it tonight, whether it makes a difference or not.

He lifts the lid on the box. He's a little the worse for wear. A lot worse, actually. A stark, unforgiving line where his chest broke along the hard diagonal. A web of veins on one side of his head. That side might be more epoxy than stained glass now. But the woman has done a lovely, careful job putting him back together and he burns bright. Even in the dim light, there's that flare of living color that drew his eye that first day. Castle can't wait to see him lit up.

There's an outlet in just the right place, exactly opposite the bed. He bends down and slides the prongs into the socket. He stretches back toward the desk and pulls the chain on the lamp there. The dark is startling, how complete it is. It's been days and it's restful and absolute.

He leans down again and flicks the switch. He's thrilled at the light that fans up from it. Up and out. Just the right amount splayed along the wall. He's thrilled and has an absurd urge to wake her. To share it with her right now, but it passes. His own exhaustion is too much. He can only imagine hers.

There'll be time enough tomorrow. Later today. Moments won't be so hard to come by now that they have some place to be. Small and cramped as it is, it's good to have someplace that's theirs for the time being.

He stands next to the beds wondering where he'll find the strength to climb up to the top bunk.

"Castle, if you don't climb in this bed right now I will bite your kneecap."

He sinks a hip to the bottom bunk and presses his lips to her forehead. "Sorry. Didn't want to wake you. I'll . . . you'll have more . . ."

But she glares at him and raises an imperious arm, taking the blanket with it. He climbs under and she glares at him again.

"Wall side," she says shortly. "I always get the outside."

"Good to know," he says and lifts her over him easily. They struggle a bit, laughing a little and sniping until she's stretched out along him, her back to his front. They're quiet. He strokes her arm, her side, her hip. Gentle. Methodical.

She lets go. Her breathing follows his fingers and he thinks she's dropped off at last when she asks. "Tell me about him."

"Tomorrow, Kate. You should sleep," he whispers.

She just repeats it, though. "Tell me about him."

He's about to. He's thinking how to start when she turns her head quickly toward him. "Castle, I'm sorry. You've been . . . all day . . . I'm sorry. You're exhausted."

He kisses her lips once. Limits himself to that because there's trouble in more, tired as they both are. "Never too tired to tell you a story, Kate."

She narrows her eyes at him. She's worried, but she wants it too badly. She wants the comfort and he wants to tell her how much it means that she wants it from him. But that's something that will keep. He nudges her face back toward the nightlight with his own nose.

"It's not just my story," he begins quietly. "Your dad makes an appearance."

She tenses a little, but he presses a palm to her ribs and quiets her.

"Oooh, actually. This will probably make you mad," he doesn't bother to hide his grin.

"At my dad?" she asks. She's surprised, curious. He has her already and he knows it. "Good. I want to be mad at him."

"You want to be mad at him?" He hates derailing a story once he gets started, but he wants to know more than he wants to go on.

She doesn't say anything for so long, he wonders if she will. He's just about to go on when she answers at last. "He can't die if I still have things to yell at him for."

It's tight. Miserable. He thinks she meant it as a joke, but she fell short. He decides he can carry her the rest of the way. "Hmmm . . . I'll make this good, then."

She huffs out a laugh and fits herself closer against him. "You'd better."

"Once upon a time, there was a brave little girl. She was so brave she stared down the darkness, even though she was afraid, and never even asked for a night light . . ."


	5. Quid Pro Quo, 2 x 17 and 2 x 18

Title: Material Witness—_Quid Pro Quo_

Rating: T

Summary: "He thinks about it. What she'll find when she opens it, and it's . . . well it's kind of a theme. Another dick move from way back when, but it's all caught up in other things for him. Beginnings and endings and realizations. And maybe it's time they talked about that. About things like that out in the open."

Spoilers: 2 x 17 Tick, Tick, Tick, and 2 x 18 Boom

A/N: Fourth story in this series. Have you heard tell of Berkielynn and her diabolicality? The series is her fault. The weirdness of this one, I probably should own.

* * *

It's the wrong city. Twenty-four floors up and shrouded in fog, it's the wrong city looming just over the top of the polished marble window sill.

He's uncomfortable—a situation of his own making in more ways than one. He'd only managed to kick off his shoes and struggle out of coat and tie before his mood got the better of him. Before he slammed himself on to the bed to watch the clock tick over until he can call.

He doesn't want to be here. He doesn't want to be a time zone away, twenty-four floors up, confining himself to half an empty bed. The whole thing is like a snake eating its tail. He wasn't _supposed_ to be here. He was supposed to be home by now.

Not home. Out. They had a date and he's an idiot. Something came up. Paula made more of it than it really was—like she always does—and he's an idiot—like he always is—and he agreed stay. Even though they'd had a date.

They don't really do that much. Dates. They see each other all day most days and spend most nights together. Sometimes they'll grab a bite out or catch a movie like they always have. Like they have for years, except it's not like that.

They're careful. They have to be careful if they go out, and it's frustrating. Another place they have to play their roles. Keep their hands off each other. And the irony is they show up on page six now more than ever. Blind and not-so-blind items about problems between them. How they hardly ever see each other any more. About the obvious tension and whether it spells the end of Nikki Heat.

So they don't really do dates and it bothers him more than it bothers her. He'd like to have her on his arm. In his arms. On a dance floor. In the park. Just wandering New York. Wherever. He'd like the chance to dress up and mark occasions and make romantic gestures. He'd like to just be with her and have it not be a thing.

But it's a bad idea, so they don't really do it.

It's not just about her job. He wants those things for _them, _not for public consumption. That's new. Or really old. It's been about image—at least partly about that—for a long time. With Meredith and Gina and everyone in between, because why not?

But it's not like that now. Not with her. He's not interested in putting on a show any more than he's interested in making her life more complicated than it already is.

So he gets why it's a bad idea. Why _out _is not really an option for them. It's no one's fault, but it's something he resents more than she does. That's what he assumed, anyway. That she doesn't really care about nights on the town and doing "couples" things. It's what he's been assuming all along, but now he's not so sure.

They'd had plans. A _date _date. Dinner and a double feature at the Angelika because she's been busy lately. Paperwork and old cases and trial prep. Not much she needs him for, and she's right—he knows she's right—that it's trouble to have him around when there's so much down time.

_Trouble_. That makes him smile. Or unwinds the scowl a little at least. They get themselves into all kinds of trouble these days.

There's the obvious kind. The kind that will come in handy if they ever find themselves in a _Die Hard _situation because they've memorized the layout of the precinct from top to bottom and back to front. Because they know every nook and alcove and back hallway. Every shadowy corner big enough for two. Just big enough for two.

There's that kind of trouble. Not as often as he'd like, but way more often than he ever dreamed he'd be able to talk her into. Not that _he's_ always the one talking _her_ into things. So there's that kind of trouble.

But there are other kinds, too. Lots of other kinds. Conversations that wind away from the task at hand. Spaceships and superpowers and the ideal flavor of ice cream if the laws of physics didn't apply. Conversations that turn silly and leave her struggling to fix him with a frown and remind him that one of them has to earn an honest living.

Conversations that skim the surface of something serious when his attention snags on some tragedy they're filing away. When they're putting the punctuation on the end of someone's life story and he gets to thinking. Or she does. Sometimes, though not as often, because she can't. She can't afford to let every case have her thinking like that. Because this is what she does. What she's been doing, day in and day out, for most of her adult life.

But some cases won't let go so easily. Some linger for whatever reason. A fatal flaw or a missed moment or a tragic coincidence. A compelling story and the conversation wanders to lines they'd cross under the right circumstances. Or the wrong ones. Conversations about regrets and last wishes and guarding against the future. About the fact that they can't. That no one can.

And sometimes the trouble is that they're not skimming the surface. They are, but they aren't. They're talking about how the rest of their lives will be as though that's been decided. And he's fine with that. He's more than fine with jumping ahead to the rest of their lives, but he wants to be sure of her. He can't help thinking that subtext should be main text at some point.

He can't help thinking that they're having the conversation without really having it and that's a different kind of trouble. Because he's dense and she's timid and they probably shouldn't talking about the future in code when they can't even get their act together to plan a date.

Or he can't get _his_ act together, because they had a date and apparently that mattered to her more than he realized and they're . . . fighting? It's probably not the right word. When they fight, they fight. There's not a lot of ambiguity to it.

But she's upset. Hurt, and that's so much worse. He'd rather have her angry at him any day than collapsing in on herself. Receding. It rakes at his chest. Guilt, but anger, too. And more guilt from that. The snake eating its tail.

He can't find his feet in moments like these. When he's angry and thinks he has at least some right to be and it gets swallowed up in how fragile she can be. _Fragile_. That's ridiculous. There's nothing fragile about her.

But she's quick to retreat, and it kills him the way she seems to expect it. Like she _expects_ him to disappoint her. And he did. He did and he has and he probably will again. He definitely will if she won't just say it out loud. What's important and what's not.

He's tired of the fog. He's tired of the tastefully ugly ceiling and the bed and being lonely. He's tired of the wrong city and knowing he's an idiot and he just wants to talk to her, but it's another hour before she said she'd be free. He thinks about murdering the bedside clock.

* * *

He jerks upright to a resounding crash and sudden darkness. Something slithers down his forearm and draws tight around his wrist. He lets out a yelp and scoots backward across the bed because . . . the clock is chasing him?

The blue display dances briefly in the black between the bed and night table. There's a second crash, a pop, and the smell of ozone. His heart pounds and his breath comes in tight, shallow pants.

"_Gonna let you make it up to me, Castle. No need to get violent."_

He jumps at the voice in his ear. _Right_ in his ear. What the _hell? _

"Kate? What are you doing here?"

"_There? Castle, are you drunk?" _

"I don't think so." He blinks and tries to get his bearings, but the darkness is absolute. "You're in New York."

"_Yes . . ." _She draws the word out.

"I'm in the wrong city," he mumbles. He scrubs a hand over his face. "Am I late? I broke the clock . . ."

She laughs and it hits him, sharp and immediate. He misses her.

"I'm in the wrong city," he repeats miserably. He hears something like a sigh on the other end of the phone. _The phone_. She called him. "Kate, seriously, what time is it? I was supposed to call. I think I . . ."

"_Early yet," _she says quietly and leaves it at that.

The faint glow of his watch face catches his eye. It _is _early. She said not to call until 11:30 her time. He must have dozed off and she . . .

"You called. How'd you know I'd be . . ."

"_9:08 CST, a disgruntled tweet from WriteRCastle about Chicago cabbies. 10:03 CST a _very _disgruntled Paula does a very brief local news segment solo . . ." _

"Yeah. Paula. Did she look . . . mad?"

"_She always looks mad." _

"She does. I think it's her eyebrows."

"_Or dealing with you."_

She's teasing. He knows she's teasing, but they both go quiet, and just like that the bubble bursts.

"_Castle _. . ."

"Kate . . ."

They dance a while longer, their words starting and stopping at the exact same moment. She draws the kind of breath that means she's jumping in and he wants her to wait. He just wants her to wait.

"Kate!" It's louder than he means it to be and he swears he can hear her jaw snap shut. "Kate, I just want to . . ."

He hears something else then. Something so familiar that it's barely sound at all, but his words run dry.

"_Castle . . ." _

She's annoyed now, but it's nagging at him and he does the unthinkable. "Kate, _Shush!_"

She gasps. She _actually _gasps. He almost laughs out loud. Then he almost tells her she sounds like his mother. Two brushes with death in rapid succession aren't quite enough to shut him up, though.

"You're at the loft! You're . . ." He listens. And apparently she's decided to wait to kill him. She's quiet. "Beckett are you in _my closet_?"

"_Castle, how the hell . . ." _

"Eduardo's cab whistle. He always blows three short, one long. It's 11:15 there and it's the . . . second Thursday of the month, so Mrs. Flagg's 'book club' should be just breaking up—and _that_, by the way, is nothingmore than an excuse to kill a bottle or four of good chardonnay. I don't think a single one of them made it two chapters into _Frozen Heat_ and I gave her _six _signed copies."

"_Castle . . ." _She's trying not to smile. He can hear it. She'll kill him yet, but she's smiling for the moment.

"Anyway, all the other ladies in the book group live in your neck of the woods. That puts Eduardo outside the Broome entrance trying to grab a westbound cab." He can't resist a dramatic pause and she's _still _not killing him, so she must be impressed. Or toying with him. "And that puts _you_, my dear detective, in my closet."

"_That was . . ." _

"Hot?" It comes out eager. A little too hopeful.

"_I was thinking . . . disturbing." _She means it a little. She's annoyed. But she's smiling, too. He's managed to surprise her.

"Really? Because it's hot when you do it." He's running with the smile. Running with the fact that she likes it when he surprises her. He knows the feeling. He wants to draw it out. The moment is light and easy and _fun_ and he wants to draw it out.

But then she laughs and there it is again. Longing like a knife and she's sitting in his closet eight hundred miles away because he's an idiot. He goes quiet and she feels it, too.

"_Castle?" _

"Kate, I'm sorry. I should've come home." He tips his chin up and knocks his skull softly against the hardwood of the headboard.

"_Why didn't you?" _

She just asks. She asks, and it's not . . . loaded. It's not a test or wary or defensive and he wonders all of a sudden why this seems such much harder when they're face to face. He wonders if he's just making it harder.

"I don't know," he says and he's annoyed that it's a lie, because he _does _know. Right in that moment, he knows. "I . . . you're busy. And I figured since you didn't need me at the precinct, I might as well . . ."

He trails off and she lets him hang for a minute. She's pissed now. He can feel it crackling through the line.

"_So you're punishing me for having work to do." _ Her voice is clipped, but it cracks a little, too, and he wonders if the windows open this high up. _"Kind of a dick move, Castle." _

"Well, when you put it that way . . . "

"_There's another way to put it?" _

"I guess not." There isn't and he doesn't have any defense for it. Nothing but the truth. "I miss you. And not just since I've been away."

She draws in a sharp breath. Not a gasp this time, but he can hear it. He can hear it. _"I miss you, too. Castle, you know that, right?" _

"Well, you're sitting in my closet, so I suspected." He's grinning, but it stings and he's not sure if all this is him being needy or her being guarded or somewhere in between.

"_Told you I was gonna let you make it up to me." _She's grinning too, and he doesn't care so much right now. Right now somewhere in between sounds ok.

"Right! And how are you going to let me do that?" He slides down the headboard and gathers the pillows around his head. He lays the phone out on its own pillow—on her side of the bed, because that's how sad a case he is—and flops on to his side as he fumbles the call on to speaker. There's a lot of background noise and no words. She's rummaging. "Beckett, you might want to wait for a guided tour of the porn collection."

He hears her snort, but it sounds like it's coming from a distance. Like she's set the phone down somewhere nearby. It hits him then. What she's doing. It hits him and he wants more than ever to just be home.

"Kate . . ." He curses silently. Why isn't he _home?_

"_This one, I think." _Her voice is faint at first. Louder on the last two words as she picks the phone back up. _"I like the look of this one." _

"Which one? What does it look like?" He grips the phone like it can show her to him. And it can. Of course it can. He's an idiot. "Kate. _Kate. _Hang up. Face time. I want to see."

"_You don't want to use your disturbing stalker skills to guess?" _He hears a rattling noise, like she's shaking the box next to the phone speaker. She probably is. _"I'll even give you a hint or two." _

"Kate." He's pleading and he doesn't care.

"_Ok . . . ok, Castle." _Just like that, all the playfulness is gone. She's serious. Like she's worried.

"I just . . ." He grits his teeth. He wants to kick himself. "I like being able to give them to you."

"_Oh . . . yeah." _Her voice is quiet. _"You'll be home tomorrow. I can wait."_

"No," he says quickly. "No, this is good. I just . . . if I can see. Is that ok?"

"_I'm wearing a turtleneck," _she says after a second. _"So you're out of luck if this is some lame attempt to get a look at my boobs." _

His mouth opens and closes a few times and he realizes it's not just him. That as much as he would give anything to be home right now, there's something about this—something about being outside the everyday—that's easier and not just for him. He runs with it.

"You realize, Detective, that I have an _exceptionally _vivid imagination and a nearly eidetic memory. I can see your boobs any time I want just by closing my eyes."

"_Hey, if that's doing it for you, Castle, I can just give you and your 'exceptionally vivid imagination' some time to yourselves . . ."_

"No, no, no," he says quickly. "Imagination boobs are only my third favorite boobs. And I want to open your present with you. Non-euphemistically."

"_Only non-euphemistically?" _

"Kaaaate." He tries and fails to suppress a groan. "I wish I were _home_."

"_Me too,"_ she says and he knows that the words are slipping through his favorite smile. _"You might be right about teleportation." _

"Of course I'm right," he scoffs. "It's the only superpower worth considering."

"_I said _might be,_ Castle. Don't let it go to your head." _

"I'm hanging up before this conversation can go any further south."

"_Guessing it's pretty far south already." _

She's dangerously close to giggling and he wonders exactly how soon he could be on a plane. He buries another groan in the pillow.

"No comment, you wicked woman. Hanging up. See you in a minute."

* * *

He snaps on the surviving lamp and winces at the brightness. He thumbs on the phone's camera and winces again. Pretty much everything about him has seen better days. The right side of his face is creased and red from the stiff hotel comforter. His shirt is suspiciously wet about the collar and one side of his head looks like it exploded.

But the screen lights up with the connection request and he can't be bothered with more than a half-hearted swipe at his hair. She has the camera on the box. It sits alone in the middle of the bed, a brown cardboard cube about the size of a hardcover book.

His heart drops.

"_Any director's commentary on this one, Castle?" _Her voice is light, teasing, and his heart drops a little further.

"I don't . . ." He curses under his breath and tries to remember what it's like to play the game. "I don't suppose I could talk you into picking a different one?"

The camera image rocks and swivels, then tips up and she's in the frame. Cross-legged and heartbreaking behind that damned box.

"Hey." He smiles and waves. He's worried and sick with it. He wishes she had chosen any other one_—any _other one—but there's the rush too. The same rush he feels every time he sees her, and he can't help smiling.

"_Hey." _She leans in to the camera. Tips her head to the side and he knows he's caught.

"_No,"_ she adds after a quiet moment. He's caught. _"I want this one." _

"Right. It's your present," he says finally. "No . . . no commentary. Maybe after."

"_Castle . . ." _She senses his unease. She pulls her lower lip between her teeth and looks away from the camera. _"This can wait until you're here." _

He thinks about it. What she'll find when she opens it, and it's . . . well it's kind of a theme. Another dick move from way back when, but it's all caught up in other things for him. Beginnings and endings and realizations. And maybe it's time they talked about that. About things like that out in the open.

"No. No, it's ok," he says with a smile. It's not much of one, but he finds some hope somewhere underneath and a confidence he's surprised to feel. "Go ahead."

She slices through the cellophane tape with a fingernail. She pries open the top flap and pulls them out one by one. Four in all, and as luck would have it, she saves the worst for last. She's careful with them. She lays each one in her palm and trails one finger over their faces, the outlines of their blocky, hard plastic bodies. One by one, she puts them aside.

Her face isn't blank. Not completely. But it's close enough that his confidence is short lived. He wants to explain. He wants to defend himself and tell her he didn't know. He didn't know until he was huddled on her corner with the world coming down around his ears. He didn't know until he had her tucked against him. Until it was thick as smoke on his tongue. The irony of being falling-down grateful for an excuse to touch her—to hold her up—as they picked their way through the burning remains of her life.

He didn't know. And then he did. He knew in a terrible rush and he had no idea what to do with it. He still feels like that some days. Like he just doesn't know what to do with the weight of all she means to him. But he doesn't tell her any of that. He waits for her.

She tips her face up toward the camera and she's frowning. Working through it.

_"__Silence of the Lambs." _She taps one of them. The one with the iconic mask, he's willing to bet, though he can really only see the tops of their heads. Not a bad likeness, he remembers. For something painted on a tiny plastic cylinder, anyway.

She runs her fingers across the whole lot. Lingers over one, then changes her mind. She picks her up. The lone female figure.

"With your good bag and your cheap shoes." He doesn't mean to say anything, but the quote slips out.

Her head snaps up and he braces, but she's smiling. Something tight and not entirely pleased—with him or with herself—but it's a smile. "Jordan Shaw."

He nods. "More FBI options with Scully, but . . ." He shrugs. He can't read her expression, but he'll go where she goes with this. Not like he has much of a choice. "Redhead."

She barks out something she probably didn't want to be a laugh and looks at him through the wave of hair slanting across her face. "You are _such_ a jerk, Castle."

"_Was_ such a jerk?" It comes out a question, not that he meant it to.

_"Was. _Were. Not are," she agrees. "Mostly. Still have your moments, though."

"I do." He nods down at his own hands.

He means to leave it at that. She's . . . annoyed. Maybe a little jealous even after all this time, though that may be wishful thinking. It might be his usual instinct to let himself off the hook. Even a self from three years ago. One he doesn't like very much. It's nowhere near as bad as it could have been and he means to leave it at that.

But his mouth is moving and there are words and they seem to be coming from him. They just seem to keep coming.

"I was mad at you then." It doesn't make any sense. Not to her, obviously, though she's listening. Something has her just listening, so he must mean something by it. It's the strangest sensation and it just goes on getting stranger by the minute. "That case. Dunn. You were a person. A whole person all of a sudden. With a life that went on when I wasn't around."

He stops then, frustrated. He's saying it wrong and he doesn't even really know what he wants to stay. But he's going on and she's letting him. "I . . . liked you. Always. And I wanted to know you."

"_For the books."_ It's quiet and he almost misses it.

He looks up, but she's focused on the figurine. Little Clarice. She turns her over and over in her hands. He wishes she would look at him, but decides it doesn't matter. Right now it doesn't matter.

"No. Not for the books. Not for long anyway. I wanted to know you for me. And I _wanted _you, because . . . well . . ."

He makes a absurd gesture at her shape on the screen and she gives him a sharp look. Another kind of smile. The one he thinks of as the Pissed-Off Special and he wonders yet again what the hell is going on with him. With them. Because it's like she's pulling this out of him somehow. She's hardly said a word and she's pulling it out of him.

"_God_." He scrubs a hand over his face and tries to talk past whatever is suddenly climbing up his ribcage and stealing all his air. "I'm not even telling this in the right order. I don't even know _what_ I'm telling you."

_"It's ok, Castle."_ It's careful. He must look like more of a wreck than he feels. _"Tell me about them."_

"I bought it . . . those . . . right after Jordan showed up. Ordered them. Just a dumb fucking joke. I was going to set them up on your desk to . . ." His words break off. Jagged and raw.

_"Annoy me?" _She finishes. She's not wrong. But it's not the whole story_._

"I just remember being so _mad_ at you. I wanted it to be a game. To make you jealous. And at first the whole thing was like this rush." His voice sounds strange in his ears. Mechanical and completely at odds with the way his heart is pounding and the words are scrabbling up his throat. "I wish . . . I wish I could say it was a coping mechanism or denial or something, but I was just that . . . awful. I wanted it to be a game. And it wasn't. He was trying to _kill_ you. Because of me."

"_That's not . . ." _She makes an angry gesture. Sweeps her palm against the bedspread and the the little men go flying. She holds on to Clarice. _"I don't remember it that way, Castle." _

He hears her. Sees her. He knows she's saying something. She's upset, but the words just keep coming.

"And then he did kill you. I thought he killed you, Kate. And it feels like I knew I loved you right then. The minute it was too late, I knew that there was this whole amazing life—this amazing woman that I was crazy in love with—gone. Just . . . gone. Because of me."

"_But I wasn't gone." _Her throat bobs like she wants to say more but she can't find the words.

He'd give her his if he could. He seems to have more than he knows what to do with.

"But you could have been. And the others Michelle Lewis, Sandra Keller. Someone loved them. Someone . . ." He breaks off. He's tired of it. The sound of his own voice. He's just _tired _ of it. He reaches out. Touches his fingertip to the screen. The edge of the little figure's skirt. "They showed up . . . I don't know . . . maybe a week later? I forgot about them and then there they were. It made me sick."

"_You kept them." _It's a comment. Maybe a question, but no more than that. She's staring down at the plastic in her hands.

"I kept them," he repeats. "Seemed like cheating not to. Whitewashing."

"_But you _kept _them._" She draws her knees up and wraps her arms around them. She curls her hand around her shin, the figure clutched tight against it. Her shoulders rise and fall and rise again. She turns to the camera and looks at him. _"To give to me. You meant to tell me the story someday." _

He blinks. The words are gone now. All of them. "I . . ."

"_Do you think we were?" _Maybe she has them now. The words. Maybe that's why he can't find them. _"Do you think it goes back that far? All the way to Dunn?" _

"Were?" One word at a time now. That's all he seems to get. There's an eerie, miserable calm to it.

"_It all got complicated right around then." _It barely seems like she's talking to him. _"I think I knew. Or I thought I did. And everything got complicated." _

It dawns on him then and it's like a kick to the chest. "We?"

It's all he gets out and then she's shoving the little plastic Clarice up the camera. _"I did _not _like her. All that reading us out loud. What the hell business was it of hers whether you . . . you cared about me or how I felt about you?" _

"I . . ." He grinds his teeth. The monosyllables are getting old, but he can't seem to put anything more together.

"_And who the hell wears a _skirt_ into the field?" _

"Not you." They slip out. Two monosyllables this time and even in this weird . . . whatever this is that's going on . . . it's the kind of thing she'll kill him for. The kind of thing that would have her flying all the way to the wrong city just to kill him.

"_You weren't, Castle." _She says it like it's been decided. Whatever it is, it's been absolutely decided. _"We weren't."_

"Weren't _what?" _He's annoyed. It's annoying enough on its own when she decides things. Worse now because he has no idea what she's talking about. And it's rarely good for him when she decides things.

"_In love." _There's an eye roll in there somewhere, but she trips over it, too.

They're talking about it and they're not and he's not sure how he feels about it. It's not their usual subtext, but he suspects it's not the kind of conversation normal people have. Normal might be overrated.

"Uh . . . I'm pretty sure I was," he says finally.

"_No."_ She fires it back, but it's casual. Like she's done with it. _"You weren't." _

He can't really believe they're arguing about this. But it's him and it's her and it's him and _of course_ they're arguing about this.

"I think I know how I felt when I watched your _apartment_ explode with you in it, Beckett. It's kind of one of the defining moments of my adult life."

"_And I know that no one—no two people—who were in love with each other could be that stupid for that long. So you weren't. We weren't. And _she . . ._" _She holds Clarice up and flicks her away like a paper football. "She _was nothing but a troublemaker." _

"No two people . . ." he repeats. "You don't read much, do you Beckett?"

"_Castle." _

"See many movies? Poetry? Plays? Because people in love are, like, the _stupidest." _

"Castle!" She snaps her fingers in front of the camera. _"Shut up." _

"Yes." He sits up straight.

"_You're coming home tomorrow." _She's using slow, loud English on him at this point and he can't stop grinning.

"I am coming home tomorrow." He definitely can't stop.

"_And we are going out." _

"Out? Yes! Out. A date."

"_And you are going to give me a present that doesn't suck." _

"No sucking." He draws a cross over his own heart, then thinks better of it. "No sucking at all?"

"_Goodnight, Castle."_

"Maybe two presents . . ."


	6. Message in a Bottle, 2 x 11

Title: Material Witness—_Message in a Bottle_

Rating: T

WC: ~4000

Summary: "He likes when she wears _real_ jewelry. Pretty things and bold pieces. Impractical and probably against some regulation or other. That's probably what he likes most: The defiance. A sliver of the wild child that was peeking through."

Spoilers: 2 x 11, The Fifth Bullet; references to later season 2 eps as well, but light on the spoilers.

A/N: Fifth story in this series prompted by Berkielynn, who diabolically put the idea in my head when I just meant the gifts to get Castle out of boyfriend jail at the end of Secret Santa/Silent Night, Ferret Night.

Unlike Castle, I _don't_ like when Beckett wears jewelry on the job. Having grown up around cops, it just strikes me as wrongitty wrong. And for whatever reason, she wears a bunch of it near the end of season 2 (I blame Demming and his weird mandibular region), so that detail caught my attention here.

* * *

_2009 _

He likes when she wears jewelry on the job. Beyond the watch. Her mother's ring. Those are part of the uniform, really. Her armor.

He likes when she wears _real_ jewelry. Pretty things and bold pieces. Impractical and probably against some regulation or other.

That's probably what he likes most: The defiance. A sliver of the wild child that was peeking through. Not gone yet. Not all gone.

But that's not all. He's not just looking for the distant past. Excavating the woman he never knew. That's part of it, but it's not the whole story.

He likes when she wears jewelry because she's fading. He feels like she's been fading all these months since he's been back. Since she let him come back.

It's not just with him. At first he assumed . . . he figured it was just him. What he'd done. That she might have let him come back, but she hadn't forgotten what he'd done and she certainly hadn't forgiven him.

But it's not just with him. He watches her with Esposito. With Ryan. Even with Lanie, she's fading, and he lives for these every-once-in-a-while flashes of silver or gold. The hints of jewel-bright color. He latches on to them like signs. Like evidence. Proof she's still in there. The woman he did know. The woman he could have known.

He likes when she wears jewelry, and the charm catches his eye. Something about that one in particular draws him. The way the top serif bows its head. The proud, straight back of it.

The slightly-too-eager saleswoman says something and he turns. She's looking at him expectantly.

"I'm sorry?" He tries not to sound annoyed, though he is, a little. At her or himself, he's not sure.

"You don't speak Russian?" The saleswoman gestures to the charm in his hand.

_Oh. _How did it get in his hand?

He shakes his head. At her. At the charm. At himself. "No."

"Cyrillic alphabet," she says as she sweeps a finger down the turning display. She taps the hint of silver in his hand. "Letter _B_."

He smiles at her, wide enough to startle them both, and tells her he'll take it.

* * *

They accumulate in fits and starts, and he has half a dozen of them before he knows it. A tiny pair of silver cuffs that really open and close. A deconstructed subway token with_ GOOD FOR _separated from _ONE FARE_ by a violent twist of the metal that appeals to him.

He doesn't take them all. There are things that make it into his hands that he doesn't take. There's a quill pen. Absolutely beautifully done in silver, the chevrons of the feather fanning out, delicate light shining through the minuscule gaps. But he puts it back. It's him, not her. A stubborn part of him insists it's _them._ It's both of them. He drops the charm and hurries away.

He finds a tiny set of muses. All nine in one store on a day he's not even looking. Not that he's ever looking. He's just likes when she wears jewelry, and he thinks . . . he's not sure what he thinks. Mostly he's trying not to think, because she's fading.

He loves the little muses. They're offbeat. Unexpected with their cheeky smiles under stiff, classical curls and the precisely rendered drape of fabric around them. He can't take them all. He doesn't want them all. Calliope is the obvious choice. Epic poetry. He pictures her rolling her eyes at that and he grins.

But it's Erato he can't take his eyes off. She's seated, her lyre in her lap and her head tipped down dreamily. There's passion in every silvery line and he can't take his eyes off her. He holds on to them both for a long time. One charm in each hand. He holds them for a long time, then sets them back on to the velvet. Nudges them back in place alongside their sisters.

He leaves them.

* * *

He doesn't know why this case is hitting him so hard. He doesn't want to know why. It's simple enough if he gives it any thought at all, but he doesn't. He doesn't want to give it any thought at all.

He empathizes with J. Who wouldn't? To be set adrift like that. To have every single tie to the world snipped to be set utterly adrift. It's awful. Of course, it's awful. But it's hitting him harder than it should.

It's his worst fear, losing his mind. That's easy enough to face here and now. Or it's familiar, anyway. He's spent enough nights lying awake with it—stroke, dementia, traumatic brain injury—all the terrible ways he could lose his mind and keep on going. His body could keep on going, and the thought of that is terrifying.

But amnesia. He's never thought about it, and that astonishes him. He's thought of everything. Every melodramatic plot twist that might get him out of a corner. Every soap opera conceit that he might wring a few chapters out of when nothing will come.

But he's never thought of this, and it knocks him back. It makes him afraid. Like he's lost so much time. Like he should have been worrying all along and now it's hurrying toward him. It makes him afraid.

It's not about him. He's not afraid for himself. There's so much that anchors him. Alexis. His mother. The books and news stories. Years of journals. Terrible plots and character sketches and somber moments, joyful moments, all of them committed to paper somewhere. All of them with weight and substance. Matter, anyway. Physical matter. He can't quite believe the pieces of him could ever be scattered for good.

It's her he's afraid for. She lives so much of her life inside. Hiding and bricking herself in. And she walks in the world so cautiously. There's so little of her here. Such faint traces that it makes him want to write and write. To commit _her _to paper. All of her. It makes him want to shake her. Beg her to tell him. Tell him everything.

But she won't.

She doesn't.

She's fading.

* * *

He finds the coffee cup on the second day of the case. They've found the dog and identified Jeremy Preswick and he breathes a little easier. He finds the coffee cup and it starts to come together.

He worries about the charm. This one. He worries that it's a little too sentimental. A little too intimate, but he can't put it down. A tiny take-out coffee cup that opens on a hinge. He peers into the interior and there's something inside. A scrap of paper and it all comes together.

He asks about the paper, but the girl behind the counter doesn't really know. She digs up the artist's card and hands it over. He thanks her and pays for the charm. He peels his coat back and slips it into the coin pocket of his jeans, safe in its plastic sleeve. He breathes easier.

He dashes off an email to the artist on his way to her. He stops by the usual truck for their coffee and smiles wide at the barista. He's seen him a few times, but doesn't really know him. The kid looks a little confused as he stutters the order back to him. Castle tells him he got it just right and shoves a fist full of bills into the tip jar.

The kid is too stunned to answer, but he calls after him. Says he'll have his coffees ready just this way. Just this time tomorrow.

Castle turns. Jogs a few steps backwards and salutes with one coffee cup. He turns back and he's on his way to her.

* * *

The artist's name is Celia, and she thinks he's crazy. Eventually she thinks he's crazy. At first? He doesn't know what she thinks at first. But when he says he'll pay her—a charm and a message for each—he'll pay her for both for each one of them. And he'll pay her to teach him. Then she thinks he's crazy.

But she says she'll do it.

And by the time Jeremy Preswick and his dog and his ex-wife/new girlfriend are walking off into the sunrise, he has all the supplies.

He hates it at first. His hands are clumsy. Used to big, bold gestures. Built for manic speed and flair, not for this. Not for this.

He wants to love it. All the accoutrements. Ink bottles, minute brushes, and care. So much care and patience.

He spoils the first dozen. Spoils another half dozen and thinks about giving up. Having Celia do it. But she shepherds him along and finally—_finally_—he comes away with it done right. Tiny, even letters in his own hand.

_T Sk L SF Van. x 2 _

Celia grins when he pulls back. She nudges the little scrap this way and that with her nail and pronounces it perfect as she sets on glassine to dry. She tells him he'll have to wait at least a day to roll it and place it inside the charm. He blushes a little and tells her that's fine. _That's fine. _

She lines up the other charms skeptically. The ones he's brought with him—the ones he already had—and the ones he wants from her. It's quite the assemblage.

A tiny glass bottle with a tinier cork. A silver scroll that opens when you turn the ribbon. His favorite: A hollowed out book that spreads open along a hidden seam. A hollow wooden cylinder seal that Celia blushes over. The hieroglyphics are nonsense, she admits. She just liked the images together, and he does, too. He likes the carvings. The way they flow into each other. Pictures of things or beautiful geometry, depending on how he looks at it. The outside is lovely enough, and he wants the message to be his. Whatever it turns out to be, he wants it to be from him to her, and it doesn't matter what's on the outside.

Celia asks if he's sure he really wants them all. She says the bracelet will weigh a ton. He blinks at her.

_A bracelet_.

_Oh_.

Of course that's what it is—what it will be—but he hadn't thought of it that way. He likes when she wears jewelry but he hadn't thought of it that way. Hadn't thought of it circling her elegant wrist, the charms tinkling as she goes about her day. But that's what it is. What it will be. And when it's ready, he'll ask Celia to put it together.

He looks down at the charms. Little soldiers in a row, and he can't give any of them up right now. He can't give up a single thing about her. He'll figure something out when it's ready, even if he doesn't know what ready means.

He looks up and realizes that Celia is staring at him. She's waiting for his answer and he says yes. He wants them all.

For now, he does. He has so much to say about her. To say to her.

Even if he doesn't know what it is yet, he has so much to say.

* * *

He fills them up, the charms. He fills them and goes back for more. Commissions pieces from Celia—a Chinese take-out container, a gun with a little flag that unfurls from the barrel. _Bang! _and something else. Something true about her. Celia laughs at him. She laughs at him, but she comes through every time.

He ruins a hundred little parchments along the way. Not because he's messy. Not because he can't make his hands do what he wants. He has the technique down, and an unfamiliar stillness comes over him every time. He's come to love it. The ritual. Every time he has that tiny brush in his hand, he's clear and calm and still, the picture of her in his mind.

He ruins them because he argues with himself. He can't stop arguing with himself. And it feels like cheating, but he finds another ink, paper that's just a little heavier and takes a lot more patience to roll up tight, and he writes on both sides.

It feels like cheating, but he argues with himself and it's a compromise. The revelation of her favorite color becomes a confession of the colors he loves on her. The light he loves her in. He has her standard Chinese order written out, but can't help adding that it's better from New China Red than Mr. Chow's.

He devises a code to cram her favorite book titles on to a single scrap and can't resist commentary. Jibes and suggestions and getting his own word in edgewise. It's hard on his code.

It's hard on _him_, but he comes to love that, too. There's a freedom in the exercise. Taking the complexity of her and pulling a single thread. A single element of her clear in his mind. Reducible to a handful of tiny letters. There's satisfaction in it. The distillation. The stark truth of things rolled up tight and tucked away for safe keeping.

He wants it to be about her. Essential Beckett in case of amnesia. More and more, though, everything seems essential. Her tells, her gestures. The little quirks of her body language and the razor-sharp grace that just about kills him every time he sees her in action. He wants to describe them all down to the last detail, so he does. He does.

He wants it to be about her, but more and more it's about them. His hand moves carefully—so carefully—and it's about them.

* * *

He has a rule with himself and he never breaks it. Not at first. At first he breaks the rule and he breaks the charms. Opening and closing them again and again, he breaks three or four things and trails back to Celia with his head hanging and she replaces them. But eventually he knows: He has to make a rule.

He can write all the messages he wants. He can write until his fingers are stained and cramped and everything swims around his vision when he looks up from the close work. He can set aside a thousand messages to dry. Glassine littering every surface in his office and he has to retreat to the bed, the living room, the kitchen, to actually write.

He can roll up a thousand messages with careful fingers. Drip the tiny dot of wax to seal them. But once he tucks it away—once a message finds its home inside a charm—he has to leave it. Then it's hers.

He loves that in a different way. The mindfulness. The way he thinks he's done with one, but his hand falters and he knows it's a thing of the moment. True for now, but not for later. Not forever, or not the whole truth, and his mind opens up to her. Opens up for her. To make space for everything she is.

He feels lighter when he does tuck something away. When he slides his nail through the wax to open one. Rereads it and laughs at himself. How little he knew. How little. Or when he opens one and the message keeps. It stands up to time and he nods. Seals it again and finds a home for it. Even when it hurts. Him or her or them. He finds a home for it.

It's done one day. It feels like forever since Jeremy Preswick. With everything—Kyra, Coonan, nearly losing her in so many different ways, worrying that he's losing her still—it feels like forever. But it's been a few months and now it's done. He doesn't know why, but he's no less certain for all that.

He wanders the loft feeling lost. Shoves his phone and his keys and his wallet into his pockets and stumbles out into the paper thin winter sun.

He finds himself outside Celia's studio. Outside the window and he feels foolish. He's turning away when she catches sight of him and takes pity. Her fingers close around his sleeve and she walks inside. She doesn't laugh this time.

She asks if it's time and he nods. Miserable. She doesn't laugh, but she smiles a little as she pats him on the shoulder. She pulls out what they'll need. Lengths of silver chain. Loops and wires and tools. A sketch pad and soft pencil. An oversized artist's gum.

_He _laughs at that. She expects him to be indecisive, but he's feeling ruthless. It's hard. It will be hard, but not how Celia thinks.

They start and the earliest things—the ones he found first and swept into his hand without a second thought—are musts. There's no question that each of them has a home there.

But there's a break in the timeline. The coffee cup is the last of them. The ones that belong. And he only has three or four spaces left. Even that's pushing it, Celia tells him, and he doesn't know how he can decide. He can't. He _can't _decide and he wheedles.

He begs Celia for another answer. He weathers her annoyance and pulls it out of her. They'll be a problem. A hassle, and she warns him that they won't be as secure. That the wear and tear of swapping charms in and out of the special loops means a good chance of losing some, but he'll take it. He can't decide and he tells her he'll take it.

* * *

_2013_

It isn't how he imagined giving this to her. He's not sure what he imagined, but every line of her body curved and sloping with defeat was never a part of it.

It all ends today. Maybe. Probably. Gates knows and it all ends.

The box is in his hand before he realizes it, and the moment resonates. He remembers looking down at the palm of his own hand. Surprised to find the little glint of silver there and the sense of rightness when he realized what it was. He remembers the hours with Celia teaching him. The hours alone. He remembers knowing her. Bringing her down to earth with ink and paper and care and fixing her there. By his side in whatever way he could have her.

There's a smart bow around the box. Silver, too, and he remembers that, too. The satisfaction of tying it. Patting the lid into place and tugging the knot just so and slotting the long, slim lines of the box into place with the others. Just a few then, but a tidy pile. Growing all the time. A satisfying moment of stillness. Certainty when certainty was so very hard to come by.

It's in his hand as he turns away from the closet. She's sitting on the foot of the bed, hands in her lap, staring at nothing. Her shoulders rise and fall with the mattress, unresisting, as he settles in behind her. At right angles. He sets the box along his thigh and has a single second thought.

Maybe she doesn't need this today. The weight of his rendition of her. Of them. Who they were four long years ago.

But he likes when she wears jewelry and he wants her to wear this today. He wants her to be defiant and sure of who she is. Sure of who they are, whatever happens.

He draws his knees up on to the bed and rises behind her. Slides one hand up her shoulder blade. Trails his fingertips over the arc of skin above her collar and curls his palm around the strong slope of muscle under the softness of her sweater. She brings her arm across her body and finds his fingers. Dips her chin to press them closer to her body. They're quiet a moment before he passes the box to her over her other shoulder.

Her head swivels toward him and her look is sharp. There's fire there and he's glad. It all ends today. Maybe it ends, but not without a fight. She'll fight for him.

"What's this?" The words are sharp, too, and his spirits rise a little more.

"Armor, maybe?" He shrugs and taps the box. "Open it."

She tugs at the bow. Mutters about how he has to complicate everything and slaps his hand away when he tries to "help." Finally, she hooks a strong finger under a long loop and tugs. Snaps the ribbon and scrabbles at the lid. Eager, though she'd never admit it.

Her brow furrows and smooths. She takes it in her fingers and stretches it out. Holds it up to the light and lets her eyes travel over it. She catches the Cyrillic character with her nail and smiles. The sound rolls off her tongue, softly. The cuffs make her laugh and she knocks his head with hers. She tells him not to hover, but doesn't do anything about it.

She comes to the shipwreck bottle first. The clear glass and tiny cork draw the eye even with the flash of silver. She peers at the loop. Realizes it's different from the others—some of the others—and looks to him for confirmation. It's essentially a tiny carabiner. He nods and she presses on the spring. Eases the bottle off the loop and works the cork out with gentle fingers.

Celia warned him he might need tools. That the tight little cylinders might resist, but this one tips out easily. She looks at him again and he's grinning. She gives him an annoyed look and breaks the seal. He offers his palm and she unfurls the paper on it.

She bends over it and reads aloud. "Favorite color: Purple."

She looks at him again and he tries to keep his face neutral. She's trying not to smile as she takes the corner between her fingers and turns the tiny scrap of paper over.

"Beautiful in red." He says from memory. Says it in her ear and brushes his cheek over the soft material of her sweater. It's true. She's beautiful in it. Her war colors.

She takes the paper from his palm and rolls it up again. His mouth opens, Celia's instructions bubbling up, but she does it perfectly, of course. Tight and neat and it doesn't even need the seal. It goes back into the bottle and keeps its shape, like it wouldn't dare do otherwise.

She taps the others. The ones that have something hidden inside. She taps them and chews her lip. Deciding. She goes for the coffee cup next, and the shorthand order wins him a quick smile and a kiss.

And then there's the book. He knows it's coming. Remembers his hands shaking when he fixed it in place. The last thing—the very last thing before he pinned the bracelet to the cotton wool and arranged the orphan charms around it to wait their turn.

She frowns at it for half a second. Turns it from one side to the other and finds the seam. Gives a delighted little laugh at the way the spine creaks open. He kisses her jaw. He can't help it. He loves that she loves it, too, but she shoos him away.

It's folded, this one, and she undoes each crease with infinite care. She lets her eyes skim over the letters as they come to light. Out of order. A puzzle and then it's done. Unfolded and the right side is up—the first side. She gives him her tight-lipped smile. The one that goes with the hard, not-entirely-fond glint behind her eyes: _You like me. (Really.) _

"Sometimes," she says as she absently pats his cheek. "Sometimes."

He reaches out for the paper. Her free hand comes up to bat his away, but something—his breath, the straightening of his spine, tension all along his arm—something stops her, and she lets him turn it over. Lets him bury his face in her neck and whisper the words from all that time ago: _I love you. (I think.) _


	7. Joy in Mudville, 2 x 15

Title: Joy in Mudville

Rating: T

WC: ~4700

Summary: "It knocks him back a little when she opens up. When she lets him see what's behind the badass facade. When she talks about days at the ballpark with her dad. When he thinks about her as a carefree little girl, clinging to her father's hand and climbing and climbing for the cheap seats on a Saturday afternoon."

Spoilers: Suicide Squeeze (2 x 15), mainly, but references to A Rose for Ever After (2 x 12), Suckerpunch (2 x13), Significant Others (5 x 10), and Recoil (5 x 14)

A/N: BerkieLynn? Diabolical. And the reason this series exists.

The gift in question was one of my first ideas for the series, but I didn't know how to work it out until recently.

I write it under protest as I refuse to accept Beckett—or any right-thinking person—as a Yankees fan.

Had hoped to get it up last week, but vacation, then plague. But pitchers and catchers report, y'all!

* * *

_2010_

He hovers the pointer over the "buy" button.

Three months ago, he wouldn't have had a second thought. Three months ago, it would have been perfect. A "girly fit" home jersey, white with pink pinstripes, "Beckett" and double zeros emblazoned across the back.

Three months ago it would have been _ideal. _Exactly the right thing to annoy her a lot and charm her a little. To make her glare and bring out the smile that goes with his name. Sometimes it goes with his name. Occasionally.

But it's not three months ago. It's now. It's after Kyra. After he let go of something he didn't realize he'd been holding on to. Something that two marriages and a kid hadn't convinced him to let go of, apparently. Something that she shook loose. Something that floated up and away, because she . . . . _She._

It's not three months ago. It's after Coonan. After she gave up her best chance for answers to save his life.

That annoys him. It troubles him, and that's worse. That he was dumb enough to get grabbed. Dumb enough to put her in that position. Dumb enough to wonder if she would have done the same if it were anyone else.

He wonders about that a lot. Did she take the shot as soon as possible—maybe sooner than she should have because they're . . . what? Friends? That feels wrong. Coming and going, that's not quite what they are. Too much and not nearly enough to capture whatever is is they are.

Or did she wait? Did she hold off because she was counting on him to get himself out of it?

Doubtful. _Doubtful._ And why would he even want that? It's her job, not his, and why would he even want that?

A prompt little voice pipes up: _Because you want her to be impressed. You want her to count on you. _

_You want. _

The prompt little voice is kind of a dick.

It's not the only one. Not the only little voice that wonders. Because he wonders if she blames him, too. She didn't take the out. When he said he'd stop shadowing her. He said he'd leave her in peace, and she didn't take the out, and that has to mean something.

But he _wants_. He wants.

He doesn't trust himself, even though It's more than just her not taking the out. It's more than just that. She said it. That she likes having him around. She said she wants him there when she gets her answers. She _said_ it and they're a long, long way from when he knew she'd never take him back.

But he still wonders if she blames him. If every time she sees him, she thinks about everything she's lost. Not just Coonan, but whatever peace she'd managed to make with her life before that.

Peace he'd set fire to. Peace he'd burned because he just had to have the story. Because he just had to know. She's right. She was right three months ago, when she said he did if for himself, not for her. She was right, however far they've come since then, and he wonders if she blames him. He wonders how he she could possibly keep from blaming him.

He circles the pointer over the button again. He doesn't want to wonder. About any of this. He wants it to be a dirty joke wrapped around a nice thing that she'll like. He wants it all to be simple like it used to be.

But it's never been simple. Another prompt little voice pipes up to point out that it has never been simple.

He clicks "buy."

* * *

He'll give it to her. This one. Because he can, right? It doesn't need to go in the closet. He can just give it to her.

It's not like the others. Strange and laden with something. Questions waiting for the right moment. _Do you? Will you? Could you ever?_ Meaning and memory and the way she builds and builds in his mind. The way she's become his landscape. The others are like that. Some of the others are like that, but not this one.

It's just a gift. He'll give this to her. It's a nice gesture. Kind of a nice gesture, but not too nice. _Girly. _That's enough to draw a sharp look from her, and then she'll see and she won't know whether to glare or smile all over her face the way she sometimes does. But it won't feel like too much. It won't mean too much. Nice, but not too _nice. _That's what he tells himself.

Having it signed is a nice gesture. Joe had agreed immediately. The whole team had. They'd wanted to do something more. Something bigger to thank her, and he heard himself saying no. That anything more would make her uncomfortable.

And it's true, right? Anything more—any big gesture—and it would be all glare when he gave it to her. Because she'd have to worry how it might look. Like she wasn't just doing her job. And anyway, she's just not like that. He doesn't think she's like that. Big gestures. It's just not her.

It's true. All of that is true, but it's not why he says no when Joe offers. It's not why he insists that he'll buy the jersey. That he'll pick it out himself. It's not the only reason he regrets the bratty move. A girly jersey. Pink and white. He kind of regrets it.

It knocks him back a little when she opens up. When she lets him see what's behind the badass facade. When she talks about days at the ballpark with her dad. When he thinks about her as a carefree little girl, clinging to her father's hand and climbing and climbing for the cheap seats on a Saturday afternoon. When he thinks about her stretching up on her toes and leaning way over to snag a foul ball. Telling her dad they'd get the next one for sure. The next one.

It knocks him back a little when she completely loses her cool because it's Joe Freakin' Torre and he hears the smile that goes with his own name and that's her _dad_ she's talking to and he's trying not to read too much into that, even though he wants to.

He wants to, but it all knocks him back a little. More than a little and he wonders if he really _can_ give it to her. If it's more than a nice gesture. If she'll know. Know _what_, exactly, he has no idea.

And that's the problem.

* * *

He doesn't give it to her. He can't.

He holds it in his hands and it's complicated. It's always _so_ complicated when it comes to her and whatever they are.

No one expected the turn the case took. Fathers and daughters and so much history. Twists and baggage and heartbreak that hit too close to home. Or should hit close to home and they don't. For him, they don't, and he feels foolish. He feels like an ass. Projecting his own weightless way of moving through the world on to everyone. On to his daughter. On to Beckett and the only family she has left that she didn't have to make for herself. He feels like an ass.

He supposes he must have cared at some point. About his father. He must have wondered and felt hard done by, not knowing. How could that particular crisis have passed him by entirely, given the strange world of privilege he sometimes walked in as a kid? As a teenager, when his mother had the money, or an in at the school, or the sheer need to park him somewhere while she traveled. Academies and such when there was nowhere else for him to go. He must have felt the lack of a father. A name or a bloodline.

He must have been made to feel it, but he doesn't remember at all. It didn't touch him deeply. By then—long before then—he was accustomed to making up the world around him to suit his needs. Making up a reality to get him over the next hump or through the next crisis. Shaping it into something that could be—if not a home to him—somewhere he could walk for a while and come out something like himself at the end.

He supposes he _has_ missed it before. In some kind of detached way, he knows that's why he never got the father–son dynamic quite right in anything he's written. Derrick Storm and Jedidiah Jones and everything before that. None of it rings quite true. No one but him really seems to care much, but he knows. He writes it by the numbers, and it's completely without anchor in the real world. So he supposes he did miss something.

He just doesn't remember it. He doesn't remember feeling the lack of or the longing for a father or anything like it until now. Now he feels it. He feels it and finds himself desperate to trade stories that he doesn't have. With her. With Kate, but with Alexis, too. With his daughter.

He's proud of their relationship most of the time. The rest of the time he feels like he deserves no credit at all. Because he's jealous and he's never had to share her. Not even with Meredith, really, because his kid is so level headed, so practical and grounded, that there's never been a question of it.

And he gets to be the good guy. He gets to argue how important it is that Alexis spend time with her mother. Gets to make sure no one speaks ill of Meredith. He get to make a show of being fair minded but cautious and protective without there ever being a question of sharing.

But now he hears Beckett's stories, and Esposito's, and Ryan's and everyone's he doesn't have any. Not with his own father. Not with the mother of his own child, and he wants stories to share. With his kid. With them all, like he's one of them.

He wants stories to share with his mother.

It's somehow never really occurred to him. They have that in common: Single parenthood, more or less, and he wishes . . .

They're good in their own way. Clumsy and sharp with each other, but it's just their way. They're solid enough underneath. And she's never said a word about it, raising him alone. Not really. Not beyond her tales of dramatic sacrifice. Emphasis on dramatic. But now he wonders if she missed it. Sharing that with someone. If she still misses it.

He wishes they both had stories to share.

Mostly, he wishes he weren't such an ass. That he weren't standing in his office at 2 am on a Tuesday, clutching a tight-fitting, low-cut, pink pinstripe jersey. He wishes he could hand it over with a leer and a smirk. That he could stand up to her glare and anything that might come with it.

He wishes it were different. That it were something he could hand over with a quiet smile and no flourish at all, just a thank you for the things she shares with him. Her days. The work she does.

Of course he wants to thank her for that, but he wants to thank her for more. For the stories she tells and the glimpses she gives him of how she was before. Of how she might be again someday. He wants to thank her for giving him that kind of . . . hope?

_Hope_. It's the right word, but he doesn't know what he means by it. Whether it's for her or for him or for them. He doesn't know what he's hoping for, and that's just one of the reasons he can't give it to her.

It's complicated and it's simple, too. He's desperate to see her in it, and that's one of the simpler reasons he can't give it to her. He's imagined her in it a hundred times since he clicked "buy" and there is no way he can just give it to her and go on breathing.

He pictures it. He pictures her shaking it out and holding it up. He pictures realization dawning when she sees the letters sprawling over the fabric. The way she'll go soft and sharp at the same time. He pictures her slipping into it, messages and _thank you_s and names—theirs and hers—disappearing up and over her shoulder. Letters hemmed in by pink lines and boldly crossing them. Cramped handwriting and careful, wide open loops falling just over her hips.

He wishes he could stop, but he pictures every detail of it. Ink and fabric and the smile that goes with his name sometimes.

He wishes he could give it to her.

* * *

_2013_

Sometimes she just needs to be mad at him. He's fine with that. For the time being, he's just fine with that. Because he loves her. Fierce. Defiant. Sentimental. He loves every side of her. Every shade and mood and incarnation, he loves her, and it feels like the novelty of that will never wear off. He hopes it doesn't. He never wants it to. He loves her and sometimes she just needs to be mad at him.

She's not easy. Not simple. Neither is he, and she's finding that out, too. That she doesn't have him all figured out. That she has to dig beneath the surface, too, and they won't always disappoint each other and not everything is a world-ending crisis. But still, he has his moods and his failings and they're not always what she thinks they'll be, and they struggle. But he loves her at the end of every day, and she loves him.

She's figuring it out, but it aggravates her. And sometimes she needs to be mad at him.

The strangest things stress her out. Money. Sometimes, but not always. His past. A lot. But not always the things he expects. Her own past. The fact of these things that just _are—_that they couldn't change even if it made sense to want to—they upset her.

Like they'd be better at this if they'd come into it without the baggage. Without experience and wariness and things they know they'll never do again. She worries and she's not even aware of it or she can't articulate it or something. So she picks fights or he sets them up and it all comes out in short bursts.

And sometimes he's an idiot and an ass and handles everything wrong and it comes out the same way. Whether he deserves it, or she just needs to be mad at him, it comes out the same way. Anger, frustration, fear, worry. It comes out, and then it's over. It's over as soon as it starts and he'll take that any day over long silences and cold freezes.

It's been a while. It's been a long time since she shut him out completely, and the reality of that makes him smile all over his face in a way that's bound to get him in trouble if she sees. Because it's never enough to say he's just happy. That he's just in love with the woman she is right now and life is good. She always thinks he's up to something when he smiles like that.

It's been a while for the small stuff, too, though. She hasn't needed to be mad at him in a while. Since before Christmas, maybe. Or at least since Meredith. Since they got through that without much more than her torturing him—deservedly and not—and him providing comic relief, because that's how they do this when she needs to be mad at him.

It's been a while, and he thinks she's trying to wait herself out. That she's set herself a challenge or something. To see how long she can go—they can go—without an outbreak.

He loves her for it. He loves that she's trying. That she's _in_ this.

But it's a little silly. He can take her being mad at him. _They_ can take it. They've had four years of practice, after all. Being angry. Forgiving each other for little things. For not-so-little things. They can take it.

He hasn't thought about it in a long time. The jersey hasn't crossed his mind in a while. He winces when he thinks of it. _Pink. _What was he _thinking? _It's not much of a mystery, though. Not really. He was so far gone, even then.

_Pink. _

Whatever he was thinking back then—however likely she might have been to kill him at the time—it's ideal right now. She needs to be mad at him, and this will absolutely get the job done. The timing is perfect.

It's perfect, and the only reason he hesitates at all is that he wonders how much it means to her. The unbroken streak. He wonders if it's therapy or something he only understands part of. If doing things like this has been wearing her down all this time and he hasn't even noticed.

He doesn't think so. The make-up sex alone suggests that this way works just fine for them. Maybe he should have more than make-up sex—however spectacular—on his side, though. _Maybe. _

He hesitates right up until the morning he lays a hand along her back and he can feel it. Tension and worry and pent up something. Until she falls on him fiercely, all teeth and nails and curses when he tries to still her. To slow her down, but she's determined and he's never had it in him to resist her. Until she tears herself away the minute it's over and stalks off to the shower alone. Until the door closes behind her, emphatic and unmistakeable.

Make-up sex without the other part. That worries him.

He thinks about it all day. He lays out their recent history and goes over it and there's nothing he can see. They've been good lately. More than good. Solid and open and together. She tells him stories in the dark and listens to his like she can't get enough. They've been good.

They've weathered Bracken and all that came of that. All that might come still. In the end, it brought them closer than ever. All that looking into one another's dark and hollow places and neither of them flinching.

It's nothing like that as far as he can see, and he can't even think of anything small. If anything she's been more _there_ lately. Present and affectionate and less like she thinks she has to hide it or ration it or whatever. And that just might be it. She might just need to be mad at him and he's up for it. He's definitely up for it.

He roots around in the closet for while and finally comes up with the box. It's worse than he'd remembered. He wrapped it, but the box came from the shop and it's stamped with pink cursive instead of the familiar calligraphy of the team logo. The bow is huge and he remembers now. He remembers going a _little_ overboard on the tissue paper inside. All frothy pastels and lots of it. _Lots. _

But it's good. It's the perfect thing right now.

* * *

It's the worst kind of day. Boring. A case, but one that's brutal, straightforward, and senseless. Nothing but endless, mechanical interviews and horrible details. Sorting out one ass-covering lie from another and hoping they got what they needed before everyone lawyered up.

It's such a bad day that she wants to go home on her own, but he wheedles and pleads and then he falters. Just for a minute, he falters.

He thinks this is where she wants him to talk her into it. He thinks it is, but she's subdued. There's no spark underneath, and maybe she doesn't need to be mad at him. Maybe she just needs to be away from him.

And that's fine. It's fine, right?

He falters and goes quiet. She does, too, and he thinks that's the end of it. That he'll go home alone like a big boy, and they'll see each other tomorrow, for God's sake. It's not the end of the world.

It's not the end of the world, but the thought of putting that box back up on the shelf cuts deep.

The timing was perfect.

But it's fine.

"Okay," he says and dredges up a smile. "Until tomorrow, Detective."

"Castle."

He doesn't mean anything by it. The old phrase that doesn't get much use any more. He doesn't think he means anything by it, but it makes her shoulders go stiff, and then he's sure. He remembers the feeling of the straight line of her spine under his palm, and he's sure enough that he has to move fast to hide a smile. She just needs to be mad at him. That's all this is.

"Kate," he says quietly. "Please. For me?"

Her head snaps up and she wants to say no. She wants to bite out something sharp and turn on her heel. But she doesn't. She won't let herself and, _oh,_ he _loves_ her.

He might love her a little too much. A little too visibly at this particular moment.

She leans in all of a sudden, like she knows he's up to something. Like she can smell it on him. He wants to protest. She _always_ thinks he's up to something, so she's bound to be right sometimes.

She's staring him down, but he won't break. He keeps his face as neutral as he can.

"Just dinner, Castle," she warns him finally.

A huge breath rushes out of him before he even registers that he was holding it, but it's ok. He's happy. Falling all over himself excited about it, really, but she expects that. It's part of the set up. He makes a few different scout's honor gestures that have her narrowing her eyes, but she'll be there. She says she'll be there.

* * *

She makes it to the loft about 10 minutes after he does, and he hasn't had time to plan anything. He doesn't have a real setup for this and it needs one. But maybe that's ok. Maybe _this _is the set up.

She wants to catch him off guard. She wants to start something. She wants to be mad at him and he can oblige without doing a thing.

She kisses him on her way through the door like she's doing him a favor, and she is. They both know she is. He stutters something about dinner. Something about cooking for her.

She nods like she's not really listening and slings her jacket over the back of a barstool as she keeps moving through the loft. She announces that she deserves a millionaire shower—the look she throws over her shoulder says it's a solo event—and she expects to be fed.

He hides his grin in the refrigerator and waits. He's still grinning a few minutes later when he realizes he hasn't done a damned thing and he has to look busy. Innocent. Like there isn't a big frothy box, smack in the middle of the bed. Like it doesn't have a card with her name on it right on top.

_Innocent_. Right.

He grabs a random collection of things from the refrigerator in a panic. He sets them out on the counter and panics again. Marshmallow fluff and capers do not create an aura of innocence. He grabs one or two of the offending items and shoves them back in the fridge. He whirls toward the pull-out pantry and grabs a few things he hopes are more

plausible.

He repeats the process until there's something that could be the makings of a meal if he squints at it. He spins away from the pantry and halfway back to the fridge and very nearly drops dead.

Because she's right there. _All _of her is right there on the other side of the counter and she's wearing it. It's more or less _all _she's wearing, although one of his new favorite prompt little voices notes that her underwear match, and he's pretty sure they didn't this morning. This morning, he's pretty sure there was a faded pattern and some questionable elastic.

She's wearing it and how did she get from all the way in the bedroom to _right there _so _quietly? _Like the noise she makes should be proportional to how jaw-droppingly hot she is at any given moment. That thought comes courtesy of another prompt little voice that can shut up any time now. _Any time._

It's cut high around the hips and from the side there's not a single inch of long, _long_ leg hidden. The buttons seem to be decorative. Or suggestions. Or something. As buttons, they are utter failures. His very favorite failures.

The shoulder seams are wide set, falling almost to her elbows to suggest it's something borrowed. Something she just grabbed from a messy, morning after heap on the floor, and he is a huge fan of that in general. Her in his clothes. The real thing. But this doesn't suck, no matter how ridiculous it is, given that whole button thing. Given the way it clings everywhere else.

"Castle!"

_Oh_. _Right. _She's _right_ there. And he's been standing here for how long?

On the one hand, he's still alive, so it can't have been that long. On the other, it's been long enough that she's mad. _Ooops. _

_No, not Ooops: Good! _Because that was the point, right? The point.

"_Castle!"_

"Yeah?" Not his best rejoinder, but at least his voice didn't crack. _Much. _

"What the hell is this?"

She steps around the counter and throws her shoulders back. She just catches the hem with her fingertips and the fabric pulls tight and . . . _shit. _She just asked him something, didn't she?

"A baseball jersey." It doesn't have a question mark at the end and it's completely true. This counts as progress. _Shit. _

"Castle!"

She takes a step toward him and he means to back away. His lizard brain and that whole fight-or-flight thing really want him to back away right the hell now.

But she's _wearing_ it.

He takes a step toward her and her eyes flash. Surprise and _how dare you? _hot on the heels of that.

"A gift." He hears himself say it and his voice is even. "Pitchers and catchers report."

Her nostrils flare and her jaw works. He takes another step and it pulls a word from her. "Ass!"

"You don't like it?" His fingers flutter at the edge of the sleeve and dart away before she can slap them.

"It's _pink!_" She spits out the words and he knows this was one of his fantasies back then. That he'd give it to her and she'd be apoplectic and it would end up like this.

"It is." He snags the shirttail that's brushing—just barely brushing—her left thigh. She doesn't slap it away. She doesn't even try.

"It's a pink. Girly. Jersey." She grabs a fistful of his shirt and she's not at all careful about it. He doesn't flinch and she goes on. "A pink, girly jersey signed by the entire 40-man roster—_and _coaching staff—of the 2010 Yankees."

He lets the shirttail go. Lets his palm fall over her thigh. She tightens her hold and he curls his fingers out and over and up in response. He feels her muscles tighten under his hand. Long and smooth at the front, tight and bunching over her hip.

He leans in close to her ear. "What's the matter? Mets fan? Did I get that wrong?"

She hisses at that. Actually _hisses_ and he might've laughed if her nails weren't almost certainly breaking skin right about now.

"Ass," she says again and her other hand finds a convenient fistful of hair and jerks his head down to look. "I can't wear _this!_"

Both hands are on her now and he's pretty sure she had counted on this going differently, because there's a whole slew of curse words he had no idea she knew the minute his fingers brush the skin just below her navel.

He takes advantage. Steps into her and rumbles in her ear.

"No. You can't, Kate. You _definitely_ can't wear this."


	8. Sunday Morning Coming Down, 2 x 18

Title: Sunday Morning Coming Down

WC: ~5600

Rating: K+

Summary: "He knows it's stupid. _She_ knows how to make them. She doesn't need this from him, but he imagines her mother more than ever now and it feels important. It feels important that there should be two people in the world who can make her eggs."

Spoilers: Mostly 2 x 18—_Boom! _and 5 x 10_—Significant Others_

A/N: The seventh story, I guess, in the series prompted by the diabolical BerkieLynn. I'm doubling up a bit here, as I covered 2 x 17 and 2 x 18 in another chapter, but this one wouldn't let go.

* * *

_2010_

He imagines her mother sometimes. How could he not? _Johanna. _She's such an enormous part of what makes Beckett _Beckett_. Her presence. Her absence. So much of what makes her Kate. Of course he imagines her.

He imagines her today. He's fragile this morning and he crowds together the little pieces of her. The things he knows and it's such an insignificant heap that he wants more. He wants to make more, and he imagines her mother.

She's fragile this morning, too. He sees it in the way her hand sweeps across her forehead to hide her eyes. The way she slides her fingers into her hair because they tremble now and then and she doesn't want anyone to know.

He sees it, even though she's keeping busy. Hiding behind the work of making breakfast. Expunging her imagined debts whatever way she can. As soon as she can.

He wishes she knew how much he'd willingly give her. That there will never be a question of debt—of her owing him—as far as he is concerned. Never. But how could she know when he's only just finding out?

He's been up practically all night finding that out, his mood swinging wildly from fear to relief to a kind of nonsensical anger to something he's pointedly not examining. Something he's not thinking about. Not with her in his upstairs bedroom and an overwhelming need to act on that. To go to her and be sure of her. To make sure of her.

He's been up practically all night finding out all of that and here she is. Quiet and efficient at the stove. Just across the counter, she's neat and precise. Of course. Totally unlike him when he cooks. When there are staging areas and war zones and terrain and casualties. Of courseshe's nothing like him when she cooks.

Although. _Although._

He can't help but notice that she's bypassed all the fancy things. The folding omelet pan and the skillet with the built-in thermometer and seventy-five settings he's never been patient enough to figure out. It's not surprising. Of course she'd cast those aside. He smiles to himself. Imagines the stream of unflattering thoughts as she roots through his cabinets.

It's not just that she passes those by, though. He would have expected that. But she's gone right for his battered stand-bys. The things he learned on. The things he uses every day, even though he always has to dig for them. Even though he has to dig past all the impulse buys he really never touches to reach the things he started out with. The things he always comes back to.

It's a neat little array in front of her. Off to the side, waiting in precise rows, and every single thing has been with him for years. Pans and whisks and slotted spoons that made the move with him from his first roach-infested apartment to the short-lived walk-up with Meredith to the first place he had for just him and Alexis. Things that he's brought with him to her. To this moment in Kate Beckett's sure, beautifully alive hands.

It makes him smile to see them. To see her like this. The efficient snap of her wrist as she whisks the eggs and turns the handle of the frying pan just so. He imagines her mother. Wonders if she learned this from her. How to tend half a dozen fires at once. How to feed a family.

He imagines her mother and it startles him—opens his sleepy eyes wide—when he hears the word on her tongue. Like she heard him wondering. Like she can see his imaginings, in which case he's in all kinds of trouble. More trouble by the minute.

* * *

It's not fair. The moment is over before he even realizes it's started. Before he even has a chance to see it for what it is. Deflection spinning out into truth.

She's nervous. Like she's been caught doing something she shouldn't. Like _they _have. The two of them. Because she's in his kitchen in borrowed clothes and it's barely light outside. It's like they've been up to something and she's babbling to cover. Like mothers—like childhood and Sunday brunch and glimpses of her self in progress—are a safe topic.

She's nervous. His mother and his daughter and the whole domestic scene make her nervous. It's more misplaced guilt than the warmth of the kitchen tinting her cheeks, and the thought crosses his mind that he'd like to give her something to feel guilty about. That he'd like to put that blush to good use. And the real moment—another kind of moment—passes without him.

It passes because there's work for her to do now, and that's how she finds her feet. She busies herself and chases memory back to the corners. There are eggs to be dished out and bacon to plated. There are things to see to, and she's done. She's done doling out information about herself. There'll be no more revelations she didn't mean to make. About her. About her mother and the way one bleeds into the other.

There's work and then there's _work_. Jordan Shaw is missing and it has to be Dunn. It has to be Dunn and his first thought is _Thank God. _Thank God it's not Kate. She dashes upstairs and leaves him with it all. Thoughts of motherless daughters. Guilt and realization and pieces of her and he just stands there. He's fixed in place.

He's rooted to the spot and he imagines her mother.

* * *

They fight when she leaves the loft. Not _fight _exactly. But she's there in the spare shirt from her locker, with a brand new duffle bag over her shoulder and there's hardly anything in it. It flops against her thigh and she looks small and all he can think of is all of New York on the other side of his door. Even though they caught Dunn and it's all over, it's all he can think about. All the evil in the world.

It's a Sunday morning and he imagines her mother and it's out of his mouth before he even knows he's going to say it. That it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous for her to go.

It is, but it's the wrong thing to say. Her smile goes hard and she's joking, but she's not. She's hugging his mother and laying her hand on Alexis's shoulder. She's thanking them both and waving off their insistence that she stay, at least to eat. At least for brunch.

The counter is practically groaning with food. He might've gone overboard. Waffles and overnight strata because he couldn't sleep. Fruit and bacon because it's brunch. Three kinds of scrambled eggs because he only had one mouthful of hers and he's trying to recreate them. Her eyes narrow when she sees them there. Three dishes, side by side, and it's like she knows.

She gives him a sharp look and hauls the duffel higher on her shoulder. It's empty enough to cave in against her hip, and he feels desperate. Panicky. It's ridiculous for her to go. But she's already at the door and his mother raises her voice. Makes a production of giving them their privacy, even though they're ten steps away in the front hall.

He tells her it's not an imposition. That she's welcome. That there's no rush. That she should at least eat. She says it's time and she's not hungry anyway. Dunn's behind bars and she can't stay here forever. His head snaps up at the word and even she looks startled. She takes another step toward the door, anyway, and he looks away from her toward the kitchen.

Two red heads bent toward one another and the strong scent of coffee and he sees her there, too. Like she was the other morning. Blushing and chatting and busy. Talking about her mother. His eyes travel back to her. The real her. The one who's going and he says something stupid. He doesn't even remember what, but it's dismissive and high handed and he reaches for the duffel bag. Tells her she's staying and that's final.

For a second, he thinks she might hit him. For a second, she thinks so, too. She jerks her shoulder back and there's a flare of anger—real anger—before she turns it into a smirk and something that falls short of a joke. A stiff, formal thank you for the hospitality and the door is closing behind her.

He wishes she'd hit him.

* * *

She's distant. After she leaves the loft for who knows where, she's distant. He really doesn't know. Where she's staying. How much she actually lost. What was salvageable. If she needs help. If there's anything at all he can do.

He hears the tail end of conversations. Dry cleaners and movers and service companies. He asks sometimes, but she's short with her answers. Clipped confirmations and abrupt changes of subject.

It's not just him. She's distant with everyone. She has a short-term sublet, according to Lanie. Not in the Village and that's all anyone knows. Some of her old clothes make an appearance after a while, but a lot of her favorites are missing. His favorites.

He thinks about her apartment. The one that's gone. How full it was and the way that surprised him. All the tiny objects and bold colors. Books and paintings. Geodes and figurines and chunky brass pieces. Things that shouldn't go together making up this bright, complicated whole.

Things out of place in time that must have belonged to her mother. Her parents. He remembers a story she told him once. About her dad when he was drinking. How she'd smuggle little pieces out of the house to save them from the nights when he was clumsy or angry or both. How much she'd lost by then.

He thinks about her apartment, and it's a different place in his mind than the hell he ran into that night. Flame and chaos and the everything raining down. Panic choking him, thicker than smoke.

It's a different place than the one they picked their way through later when it was safe. _Safer, _despite the blackened, drenched plaster and yellow tape. Her mother's ring lying there in the middle of everything like a miracle and the watch he slipped into his own pocket before she could see it. Before she could see the cracked face and its hands frozen in that awful moment.

In his mind, it's just the way he left it. They left it. Because one night wasn't nearly enough time to snoop. To run his fingers along spines and over dust jackets. To turn things over in his hands and wonder about their stories. To imagine her mother and how much of her is here. One night wasn't enough, so he builds it back up in his imagination and everything she has lives there. Intact.

It's a different place in his mind and he wants to give it back to her.

* * *

He's obsessed with the scrambled eggs, and everyone but him is sick of it. He grills them both. His mother. Alexis. About what they tasted. The contents of the fridge. The pantry. Things she might have used and not put back in quite the right place. But it's hopeless. It's Kate Beckett. She put everything back in the right place. Labels turned to their original angle within a micrometer, probably.

He experiments with liquid. Heavy cream and half and half and milk of all kinds. Chicken broth when he's desperate, and that goes terribly wrong. It's like the bastard child of egg drop soup and a frittata and he hands over his credit card wordlessly. His mother and Alexis go out for brunch without him.

Then he thinks it might be the fat, and for a week, the backs of his hands are pocked with tiny blisters. Spattered ghee and bacon fat and every kind of oil. It goes on long enough that she notices. She asks and he deflects and they go back and forth. And for a minute it's like nothing happened. It's like she's not living out of a duffel bag and a few boxes God knows where and he didn't nearly get her killed.

But it doesn't last. She closes up again and he doesn't even know what he said. He doesn't know why she's being like this.

It's stupid. He knows it's stupid. _She_ knows how to make them. She doesn't need this from him, but he imagines her mother more than ever now and it feels important. It feels important that there should be two people in the world who can make her eggs. It's stupid, but he can't talk himself out of it.

He experiments with spices and scours recipes and eats a lot of eggs alone in the middle of the night.

* * *

He gives up on it all at once. It's actually decent batch, but it's not right. It's no closer to what she made than anything he's tried so far and he scrapes it down the garbage disposal. He slams the plate in the sink so hard that it chips, and he startles at the sharp sound of Alexis's voice from behind him.

He opens his mouth to apologize and closes it again. She just shakes her head and asks for waffles. They make them together. Side-by-side, and he knows then that it's impossible.

Because she's sixteen and she still gets to sift the flour, but he has to pour it in the top for her and she drapes a dish towel over her arm like a curtain because it always upset her. All that careful measurement and then the minute bits of flour that would escape into the air and dust the countertop.

So she uses a towel and they decide on a number to count up to while she squeezes the handle. He whisks the towel away with a flourish and she rolls her eyes and yells "Voila!" because she's sixteen and she's humoring him and it's impossible. It's just one of a dozen rituals they have. A hundred and this—_this_—is really what he wants to give Kate. And it's impossible.

Because her mother is dead and she wouldn't stay. She's living alone God knows where and everything she has—however little, however much—must still smell like smoke.

He gives up on it all at once and she seems to notice. She comments on his hands. His clean cuffs and the sudden reappearance of pastries with their coffee, but he's the one who's distant now. Quiet for him, though he doesn't mean to be. He just can't get over it. That it's impossible. That he can't give her anything.

That she's stubborn and won't let him give her anything.

* * *

It's a good day until he finds the shopping bag under her desk. They're sniping over the case and she's like her old self. She lands a particularly good insult that he only half set her up for and he drops into her desk chair to retaliate. He spins and his foot knocks against something and then she's flying at him. Furious.

It's books. It's just books, but she shoves him out of the way. Crowds around them and won't let him help her gather them up. He pushes up from his knees and mumbles an apology. He heads for the break room and thinks about leaving altogether. She doesn't need anything from him. She doesn't want anything.

He dumps the coffee he only just poured and rinses out the mug. He turns and she's leaning with her back against the doorframe, at right angles to him. She doesn't apologize. It's just a few short sentences. She tells him the place she's staying has a rooftop garden and she's been laying things out to air. And then it rained. She rushed out in the morning and got stuck at the precinct late and it rained.

He says he's sorry and she shrugs. Tells him at least she knows what she lost this time. Most of it, anyway.

He asks about the books. She shakes her head and says she doesn't even want most of them. Not just to have. That it's not the books at all. It's the handwriting. Scrawled notes and doodles in the margins. Coffee stains and ticket stubs and dog-eared pages and those are gone. Fire and water and they're gone.

It's not the books at all, but she buys them anyway.

* * *

Nothing much changes after that. She's still distant a lot of the time. He can't even think about eggs. He pictures her sitting cross-legged in a rooftop garden, riffling pages and bracing for the smell of smoke. Prying back waterlogged covers and wondering what she lost. If she can ever even know that much.

He ducks into a used bookstore one day to get out of the rain. It's a cramped space, and the owner is a hundred years old and suspicious. She clomps down the narrow aisles after him with her cane, _tsk_ing any time he takes something down from the shelf.

She follows him to a dead end. The rickety shelves flare out into the slightest cul-de-sac and there's a single chair. He turns to face the old woman and drops into the chair defiantly, an oversized book clutched to his chest. She narrows her eyes and he opens the book to the first page. She stands there staring, but he's engrossed and she clomps off again. Eventually.

It's a cookbook. Something about brunch with more exclamation points than it deserves. More than either the subject _or_ the book deserves, but he knows it from somewhere. Not one of his, though. It's too old and not his kind of thing. Not anyone's kind of thing, really. The cover is cheap and tacky. The whole thing is dated and the photos are unappetizing. It has the feel of an unwanted gift, but he knows it from somewhere.

He flips to the front, hunting for a clue, and his fingers fall on it. The top right corner of the title page: JB '77. Memory sparks and his heart hammers, even though he knows it's just a coincidence. It has to be just a coincidence. The book is hers—Kate's. Or it was. And it must have been her mother's first—'77. She wasn't even born yet, and doesn't that make him feel a million years old?

The initials are just a coincidence. It's not her copy, but that's where he knows it from. Her apartment. He pulled it off the shelf that morning and flipped through. Tried to come up with something he could throw together from the chaos of her fridge before he settled on pancakes from a mix.

He flips to the table of contents on a hunch. There's a whole section on eggs and the recipes are ridiculous. Heavy on the margarine and processed cheese food products and there's white toast everywhere.

He doesn't even feel the pen in his hand until the owner is standing over him again, thunder on her brow. He looks down and realizes he's been writing. In the margins. Across the vast plains of white toast. There's no order to it. It's sketches and lists of book titles. Things he remembers and where they were on her shelves and tables and window sills. The well-mended border of the throw from the back of her couch and how it felt under his cheek when he slept a while.

And a lot about eggs. A cautionary tale about chicken broth. A fairytale about the hard life of his favorite whisk. A story about the day he gave up and made waffles with Alexis. Other stories from when she was younger. When she filled a cast iron skillet to the brim with cinnamon because thought that's what seasoning was. Stories from when they were learning together. Soaking pans and scraping off burned edges and making notes in the margins. Even one about his mother. Some ambitious disaster with phyllo dough he hasn't thought about in years.

It's all harmless enough until he turns the page and this is about her. About her in his kitchen. How right she looked there with his favorite whisk in her hand and how she didn't have to leave so soon. How he worries about where she is and why she feels like she has to do every damned thing alone. d

About way he imagines her mother. The way he sees her taking the whisk from Kate's hand, adjusting the flame and pointing things out. Tutting and correcting her technique and slapping her hands away. Because she must have gotten it from somewhere. Kate must've gotten it from somewhere.

He looks down at the last thing he wrote: _I'm sorry _and a single point of ink. He lets the pen linger a moment and finishes it: _I'm sorry she's gone. _

He snaps the cover shut and the book store owner goes red. She opens her mouth, but he beats her to it. He smiles up at her and says he'll take it.

It's not about the book, but he'll take it.

* * *

_2013_

He catches her looking at him a lot lately, and it freaks them both out a little. That's not the way this works. He should be able to tease her about it, but it dies on his tongue every time.

There's something on her mind. The sheer relief of Meredith's departure dissipates and Kate still has something on her mind.

He starts to ask a dozen times. If Meredith said something. Or Alexis maybe? But he thinks they're past that. It was more him than Alexis, anyway. _Typical. _

He wonders if he said something. Did something they haven't been over yet. They've been over a lot. A lot about Meredith and his misplaced guilt and the fact that he's obviously a little crazy when it comes to her. Because some small part of him actually expects her to step up as a parent. Every time, he expects it. But maybe he sabotages it, too, and then he overcompensates. He's been over that, anyway.

Maybe she hasn't. But she listened. Quiet and a little amused at the way he went on and on. But he doesn't talk about that stuff. With anyone. Because his mother just waves him off and says it's Meredith's way, and Alexis gets stoic. And it's not like he knows how people do this. How normal people do this. So he went through it with her, surprised to hear his own voice going on and on, and she listened.

And they've talked, too. About the fact that he knows and she knows that it's about boundaries and not some kind of choice between her and Alexis—between his girlfriend and his kid. And neither of them thought that, but he's glad they said it anyway.

So he's talked and they've talked, and there's still something on her mind. He starts to ask and stops again and again.

Alexis gets better and goes back to school. Kate spends the night at the loft now and then, but she'd rather be at her place, it seems. He's fine with it. If he's going to sleep, he can sleep anywhere. If he's not, he likes to snoop and she's filled this place up just like she did the last one and it still surprises him.

He likes her place and he doesn't mind, but he worries that they're connected. The loft and whatever's bothering her. Whatever has her sizing him up and keeping quiet.

* * *

It's a Saturday night and they're on the phone. He's writing. He's supposed to be writing, but they're on the phone and she's laying out her Sunday. Laundry and bills and practical things.

"Don't," he says and surprises them both with how urgent it sounds. "Come over. Sleep in and then come over and I'll make brunch."

She laughs it off. Says he'll do anything to get out of writing. That she really has things to do and he can find some other way to procrastinate.

"Kate," he says, like he hasn't heard a word. "Come over. I want to feed you. Like your mother did."

He sucks in a breath. He didn't mean to say it. Didn't know he was going to until it was out, and now she's quiet. So quiet, and he's half a second away from apologizing for who knows what. But her soft _ok_ comes down the line first and he thinks maybe he'll ask her. He thinks maybe tomorrow, he'll just ask her what's on her mind.

* * *

He goes to take her coat and runs into the duffel bag. The same one. _The same one_. He wonders what kind of sign that is.

"Laundry," she says as she dumps it on the floor and gives him a look that says she knows this is going to be a production and she, at least, really has things to do. A look that says she knows him.

She does. He smiles and decides it's a good sign. Today, the duffel bag is a good sign.

She follows him into the kitchen. Crowds into him on the inside of the counter and says she wants to help. That she always helped her mom.

He stops, then. Dithers with the whisk in his hand, because he's back in that moment. That first moment with her in his kitchen in borrowed clothes talking about her mother.

But the counter is set. Two places with real napkins and a bright red bowl of strawberries. A recreation of the scene she set that morning, except for the book next to her plate. He tells her maybe later and shoos her around to the other side.

The wrapping paper catches her eye. She gives him a look as she hefts it. Like she's going to wait. Like she'll try to guess what it is, but her fingernail is already finding the seam.

Kate Beckett loves presents. It's one of his favorite secrets, recently unearthed. She loves the mystery and the ritual and it's absolutely one of his favorite things.

The paper comes away and she folds it neatly. Sets it aside and laughs when she sees the exclamation points. The tacky cover. "I lost this one. I didn't remember."

He just nods and busies himself at the stove. He wrapped it last night. Pulled it out from between shoeboxes and summer things. He supposes he meant to add to it—always assumed he'd add to it—but he never did. Just rushed out into the rain with it tucked inside his jacket and put it up on the shelf as soon as he got home.

She starts at the beginning—at JB '77 and they share a look.

"Weird, right?" he says and she echoes him. _Weird. _

She keeps him company while he works at first. Flips through and reads out some of the more ridiculous advice on how to be a good hostess. Orange wedges and drinks chilled with frozen melon chunks, mostly. Frilly toothpick essentials.

"This is _so _bad," she laughs and stops short. She looks up at him like she's wondering something, but he's preoccupied. The eggs are just coming together and he's coaxing the fluffy mass to the center of the pan.

"Your heat's too high," she says absently. Her nose is back in the book and she's not going page-by-page any more. She's on to him.

She balances it on her forearms and lets it fall open and there it is. His handwriting. He lowers the heat on the pan and tries not to look. He didn't look last night. Slapped the first piece of tape to the cover right away. Folded a sharp crease in the wrapping paper and buried the urge, but now he's nervous. He thinks it's innocent enough. Things he knew. Things he wanted to tell her. Things he wished she'd tell him. Innocent enough, but he's nervous anyway.

He comes around the counter with the eggs and nudges her elbow. She shoots him an annoyed look, but eases the book on to her lap and picks up her fork. Steady bites travel from her plate, and she doesn't notice when he slips another piece of bacon on to her plate. Refills her coffee and shovels a few more strawberries into the little glass dish to her right.

Her hair falls around her face and her hands are busy on the page. She swaps her fork from one hand to the other and lets her fingers land on the sketch of her old living room, clumsy but a passable likeness in its pale toast frame. Her shoulders rise and fall and she sweeps her hair behind her ears and sits up when she remembers something. When something comes back to her and it's good. Something she was glad to have for a while, and not just another thing she's lost.

He sneaks another spoonful of eggs from his own plate to hers and she catches him this time. She grabs his wrist and he freezes. She's laughing, though. She's laughing and tapping the page with her pinky. The chicken broth. He laughs, too, and she scoops up a forkful of eggs and feeds it to him. Follows it up with a kiss and a whisper. "Butter. More butter at the last minute and toss them in the pan."

He feels his face light up and he knows it's silly, but it's like an itch he's been waiting to scratch for three years. He wants to make another batch. To do it right, but she tells him no.

"Another Sunday," she says and goes back to the book.

_Another Sunday._ That sounds good. Whatever's on her mind, there'll be other Sundays and he'll do the eggs right. For now, he putters around. Cleans up and moves things from here to there and tries not to read over her shoulder.

It's strange. Good but strange, he thinks, the way she snorts and rolls her eyes at some things. The way she softens at others. But he holds his breath when she turns the page. The last two have him holding his breath.

He doesn't remember much. Half-formed thoughts and questions. Kate and and her mother and the two of them together and what did he know? Then or now, what does he really know about her mother and the way she was? He holds his breath and plays at being busy.

She doesn't spend much time there. Her fingers trail up and down the margins. Across the page and linger at the end. She shuts the book long before she can have read much of it. She shuts it for now. He thinks it's just for now.

"I'm sorry she's gone, too." She says it quietly. After a while. "With everything, I forget that sometimes. That I'd still be sorry no matter how she died."

He folds the towel in his hand and comes around to sit next to her. The book is heavy on her knees and he just wants it out of the way. He reaches for it, but she tugs back. He looks up at her, startled, and she's looking at him again.

"Thank you," she says and lets it go.

"Welcome." He sets it aside and waits. She's still looking at him and he thinks he won't have to ask. If he can keep quiet a while, he won't have to ask. _If. _

He doesn't have to ask. She waits for him to settle. For his hands to go as still as they ever are. She waits a long while and he nods, finally. She nods back.

"Are you sorry?"

"About?" It's not what he expects. It's the kind of thing that probably should have him worried. Have him running through what he did or didn't do, but he's just curious. She's hesitant. She won't back out of this now that she's made her start, but she's hesitant. And he really doesn't know what it's about.

"About your father. About not having one." Her cheeks go a little red. She looks away, then back toward him like she wants to know it's ok.

He's still now. Truly still and not just for him.

He wants to tell her it's ok. He wants to smile or kiss the top of her head or offer some kind of gesture. But it's a howling blank for him. Just a howling blank, like it always is. He's not sorry. He's not angry. He's not anything in particular about it and he doesn't have an answer.

He doesn't know if it's ok. If _he_'s ok. Because that's for someone else to say. Alexis and his mother. Her and the people who depend on him. It's for all of them to say or at least he's always thought so.

He's never had an answer for this, but she's looking at him and he thinks he should. For the first time, he thinks he should, so he starts. He makes a beginning with her.

"I don't know. I've never known."


	9. I'll Cover you, 4 x 15 and 4 x 16

Title: I'll Cover You

WC: ~12,100 (oops)

Spoilers: Pandora (4 x15) & Linchpin (4 x16), primarily. References to Flowers for your Grave (1 x 01), Knockout (3 x 23), Rise (4 x 01), and 47 Seconds (4 x 19)

Summary: "It should be _fun, _and it's not. Not exactly. His heart should race at the thought that she wants him. That she wants him, too, and doesn't want anyone else to have him."

A/N: This was challenging. And long. And challenging. Pandora and Linchpin are so meaty and right smack in the good and the bad of season 4. The gift here is a little goofy (and a little bit of a cheat), but I hope you'll bear with me on it.

Berkie Lynn, of course, is the diabolical fiend who prompted this series.

* * *

_2012_

He can't help thinking this should be more fun. A caper. A _spy _caper and holding it all over Gates' head. Keeping her out of the loop—keeping everyone else out—under CIA orders. Just the two of them and a spy caper. There's nothing not fun about all that.

And then there's the fact that she's jealous. Kate is jealous. And if that's not fun—not exactly fun, anyway—he sort of needs it.

It's been hard lately. Harder. One thing after another, and it's been harder to hope. But she's jealous and that's something.

Several somethings, really. Because she's not just _jealous_. Not just jealous for herself. She's jealous for Nikki. And jealous for them. For them as partners. As a team. For all the things they mean to each other.

He thinks so anyway. He thinks she's jealous in a lot of ways.

But she's _jealous_ that's definitely part of it, and that should be fun. It's always been fun before, and it should be fun now. But it's not. Not really.

It's _good._ It's definitely good, because he needs a win for them right now. Because one day they're walking arm in arm up a church aisle and dancing cheek to cheek like it's not the end of the world, and the next, everything is crashing down around them. Four years and the lie that's keeping her safe and he needs a win to hold him steady. To make him believe that it will all come right someday.

He needs a win, because he worries that someday is something he made up. Delusion or self-preservation or whatever. Because ten words and the very sight of her were enough to undo three months of silence. Three months of making himself believe he could live without her.

And lately he's been worried that it's all in his head. Someday and everything underneath the words.

But she's jealous and it gives him a little solid ground. So it's good. Knowing she's jealous is good.

But it should be more fun than this. It should be _fun, _and it's not. Not exactly. His heart should race at the thought that she wants him. That she wants him, too, and doesn't want anyone else to have him. That should skitter over his skin and knock the breath from him. Pull his heartbeat along, faster and faster, and it does. It _does. _

But there should be sparks and banter flying back and forth between them, too. That's what's missing. Because she snipes at him and he says stupid things like usual. But she looks at him with wide, questioning eyes. She looks away and she's hurt. She's really hurt.

Part of him bristles at that. Part of him wants to call her on it. To say out loud that she's being unfair. Completely unfair. That it was a _decade _ago and did she really think he'd never . . . researched a character before?

The pause is there, even in his head. Even in his head, they talk about it, but they don't talk about it, and it curls his fists and makes him want to shake her. Makes him want to rail against it. To tell her that she doesn't get the guided tour of his past because she's the one who decided that it's not someday yet. And wasn't she the one who didn't want to talk about numbers?

But she's hurt, and it keeps coming back to that. It keeps coming back to the fact that she's not just _that_ kind of jealous. It's something bigger than a smug smile and him taking sly digs at her. It's too big for it to be fun.

More than anything, it makes him go quiet inside. It's almost . . . solemn. Because she makes him rethink everything. His past. Their future. What he hopes for. Where he sees himself. Who he is and what he wants out of his life. How it is now and how it will be when it's time. When it's someday. She makes him rethink it all.

He hears himself tell her that with Sophia, it was never the way it is with them. He says it out loud and it's true. It's less than what he wants to say. So much less, but it's truer than a lot of things he says. A lot of things either of them is allowed to say.

And it's not just . . . appeasement. It's not a platitude or a joke about her being his work wife. It's not just the thousandth in a series of things they've said to each other because they're not in a _relationship,_ but they're in a relationship.

It's true. It's as simple as that. It was never the way it is with them. He and Sophia were never partners. And there's nothing—really _nothing—_for Kate to be jealous of.

He can't deny the moment. Not completely. _That_ wasn't nothing. Seeing Sophia again after all this time. It wasn't nothing. But it rang out and faded and the words have all the force of realization behind them. Even though he makes a joke. Even though he lets them both off the hook with it. Even though she smiles and he's grateful. He's so grateful when he sees the hurt recede a little. It's true in so many ways: It was never like it is with her.

He wants the nostalgia. He'd like to enjoy that moment a little. It was important. That time was important. A chance to live out the kind of fantasies that made him want to write. And he'd like to get swept up in the memory now. The intrigue and the way his heart used to pound, watching Sophia work. The thrum of the command center. The urgency. Scrawling disjointed words anywhere he could because there was so much going on.

But it keeps coming back to the fact that it's true. Even though he wants to linger over memories, it's true.

He'd like to call up that thrill. He'd like the nostalgia. The option of it, at least. But all he can think is it's not the same.

It was never like it is with them.

* * *

It keeps coming down to the two of them. It's strange. The sudden weight of it when a week ago—a day ago—everything between them felt like flame and air and now it keeps coming down to them.

It's strange what's preoccupying him. What's preoccupying them both, he thinks, in the middle of one of the biggest, weirdest, most overwhelming cases they've ever worked. With everything. With Alexis and Gage and Sophia. And right now, with Jones and his fucking black bags—_again_—it comes down to the two of them.

She's silent and still beside him. Apart from him. It's not like the first time Jones grabbed them. Not at all like the first time. She kept reaching out then. Signaling and drawing his attention. Trying to get him to remember. Relying on him. To notice the turns and sounds. The feel of the road changing underneath them. To help her build something. A picture. A sequence of events to go on when they found their opening. When they needed to make their move.

Last time, she kept reaching out. Touching him when she could manage it, with both their hands cuffed and no idea how much cover they had on opposite sides of the wide back seat, she kept touching him. And that was something else. That was down to them. Fingertips brushing his elbow and pausing. Heavy and ending in a sigh she couldn't quite silence. Relief and worry, both. Reassurance, for him and for her. And that was all down to them.

But she's still now and he doesn't have to see her to know her spine is rigid. That she's sitting tall and haughty and absolutely still. That her fingers are knotted in her lap and she's chewing the inside of her own lip. That there's a lash of anger and hurt just waiting. Just waiting.

And he wants to apologize.

It's ridiculous, and there's a stubborn push against it. Something knotted and heavy hammering at his ribs that says no. _No._ That he has nothing to apologize _for. _

But he wants to. He wants to.

He wants to tell her that he shouldn't have hit the stupid panic button. That he should have known he could count on her. That he _does _know that. He can always count on her. His partner. That there's nothing that the two of them can't get themselves out of and he knows that.

That Sophia isn't his girlfriend.

That's the thing he wants to say most, and it keeps him from saying anything at all, because it's _absurd_. Even if Jones weren't there. Even if they weren't cuffed and bagged in the back of a 100%-obvious spook mobile, it would keep him from saying anything at all.

It's _completely _ridiculous. But he's still biting it back. The drive goes on and on. Jones is circling and doubling back and it's all more than a little over the top. It's taking forever. And even in the middle of everything, he's biting back the denial, and what are they, sixteen?

He did the right thing. The sensible, _logical _thing. He couldn't have known what Gage had planned. He couldn't have known how things would go down. Whether he'd kill them both or knock them out or whisk them away to God knew where. He couldn't have known, and it made perfect sense to make sure someone would at least come looking for them.

And she's not his girlfriend.

He wants to say all of that, but it comes down to the two of them. To the fact that they're partners and the look on her face. Hurt and disbelief. Betrayal and the way she shrank away from him in the confines of the trunk. And it's not fair. She's not being fair, and that doesn't change a thing. He feels guilty. He wants to apologize for losing faith.

He wants to reach out. To lay his fingertips on her and make them heavy with an apology, because that's all he can manage with his hands cuffed and the wide back seat between them.

Because it all comes down to the two of them, and he wants to reassure her. He wants to tell her that it always will.

It always will.

* * *

He wants to be angry, but he can't quite come up with it. If he tries—really tries—he can get to indignant, but that's about it. At best, he's . . . angry that he can't be angry. And it's familiar. Dizzying and typical of so much of the last four years and even _that_ realization doesn't quite get him to angry.

He stares down at the chess board. Knocks the bishop over for effect—for the satisfaction of the sharp clack and the helpless roll of it back and forth—but it's play acting. He's not angry.

He sweeps the chess board aside anyway. Even though he knows it's a pointless gesture and a lie, he sweeps it aside and the remaining pieces topple. The other bishop and the pawn teeter and fall and list from side to side.

He trails a hand down one side of the desk, counting under his breath until he finds the drawer and slides it open. It's mostly empty. Three or four stationery pads scavenged from hotels. A scattering of binder clips. An old, half-eaten package of fruit leather, for some reason. _Ew. _

He slides it all aside and finds the seam in the bottom of the drawer. His fingers press down and meet resistance. A hidden spring. It takes him a second to remember the sequence—the combination—and he wonders how long it's been.

_Eleven and a half years. _That came readily enough today, and he tamps down a flare of embarrassment. Guilt at how eager he sounded. Like he's been counting every day, and no wonder. No wonder she's worried. No wonder she's hurt.

He shoves the thought away. He's done with that. He's done with the guilt and the questions she won't quite ask. He's done putting himself out there while she takes her shots. _The way you look at her, you're sure as hell aren't on mine. _

If she's worried, that's on her. If she doubts him—doubts that he's been anything but on her team for four years—that's on her. He's been there. When she's wanted him there and when she hasn't and when she hasn't been able to make up her damned mind, he's been there, and if she can't see that—if she _won't _see that . . .

She's the one who won't take what he's offering. What he's held out to her again and again. The one who has them talking in circles about partners and research and muses and teams when he loves her. He just loves her and he's so tired of talking in code. He's so tired of not saying it. He's _tired_ and he wants to be angry about it. And if he can't be angry, he'll be done with it. He's done.

His fingers find the seam again. He presses down and releases, counting it out. A pause, and he presses again, then one final push and hold. The panel releases and there's something. A little of the thrill he's been missing and he snatches at it. Reels it in and tries to keep it. Tries to push away the reality of her voice cracking and her eyes flashing dark with hurt as his fingers skate over the contents of the hidden compartment.

There's a laminated, clip-on badge he wasn't supposed to take. No name, just a number and a dense square of ink—a QR code, he realizes now, though he'd never even heard of one back then. A couple of sheets of what looks like plain paper, every one with a digital watermark. He wasn't supposed to take those either.

He lifts them out one by one—his little hoard of contraband—until it's the only thing left. His notebook. He lays his hand over the black matte cover and pictures the contents. Pages crowded with his handwriting. Ink and pencil led. Crayon on a few pages, he remembers, pilfered from a kids' menu in some diner in a fit of sudden inspiration.

He pictures the sketches and the shorthand. The thick, black bands of impenetrable ink and fringes of torn-out pages, all courtesy of the humorless, heavy-handed censor who met him coming and going every day. A silent, thin-lipped man whose name he never knew. Whose face he can't remember. Which, he supposes, was the point.

He remembers the missing pieces, though. That's the irony. The squeal of the marker on the page, the adamant jerk of his fingers and glue curling at the margin of the notebook's binding. Sections razored out entirely here and there. They burned every detail into his memory like nothing else.

It all seemed haphazard at the time and he remembers wondering if it was part of the game. Striking out innocuous notes on mannerisms, body language. Confiscating his crude sketches and idle snatches of mundane conversation. Heaping what mattered—what might be a security risk—together with the clutter of a busy mind. Now it seems so trivial, he wonders what mattered at all. What could have possibly mattered.

He pours a glass of scotch. Settles into the chair and savors the moment. Tells himself that he's savoring it. He makes himself wait before he reaches in and pulls the notebook out. It's no good, though. The thrill is slipping away already.

He remembers it too well, now that it's on his mind. He doesn't have open the notebook to know what he told Kate is true. That everything single thing she would let him say is true.

Most of it's like dictation. Things he took down when he hung on Sophia's every word. Just-so stories and the odd cadence of someone else's fairy tales. The stories she gave him neat and gift wrapped and hollow. Fun in the moment, and they served their purpose. Bought him more than a decade of freedom. But it's not surprising that he hasn't really thought about any of this in a long time. It's not surprising that the story left him in a rush once he stopped to think. Once he noticed.

He opens the notebook anyway. Wonders if there's really as little of him here as it seems right now. Hopes it's really not as thin as all that.

It is and it isn't. There are things pushed to the corners that he likes. Marginalia and observations framed with heavy strokes of the pen. Texture and weight and sureness hugging the edge of the page every now and then, and there's pleasure in that. The stamp of confidence in his own words, even if he had to talk himself into it then.

There are more of those as time goes on, but the pages are mostly filled with something he doesn't like much. Stick figure dialogue and mechanical plot points. Things chained together and full of empty space.

He's better than this now. He doesn't kid himself. He's not saving lives or changing the world with what he does, but he's better than this. It's time and experience, but it's more than that, too.

It's her. It's them. Whether he's angry or not. Whether she's hurt or not. He lays a hand over the page and he knows it's true: It was never like it is with her. He's better with her. Because of her.

The scotch disappears and he pours another. He keeps turning pages and ignoring the chess board at his elbow. He reads everything. Makes himself flip back when his attention wanders.

The pen is in his hand before he notices. He adds notes. Takes scissors to one page and tape to another. Draws things together uses them to flesh one another out. It's so obvious now. So obvious how things ought to fit. That there has to be a better reason for this to happen and that to come next than simple expediency. That there has to be something underneath.

He finishes the second scotch and keeps writing. He's tearing pages out now. Here and there. The things he hates. The things that are worth salvaging. He tears them out and knows in the back of the mind that he'll lose it completely about that at some point. It's not something he does. Ever.

But he tears them out. Lays them alongside fresh sheets and fills those. Clips them together and goes hunting. Other notebooks from a year ago. From three years ago. Four. The time in between when he had nothing. When everything was edges and outlines with nothing inside and he thought he was done with writing. Done with who he'd been for more than a decade.

He lays them side by side and writes on fresh pages in the middle. He realizes he was done. Looking down at the old pages and the new, he realizes he was absolutely done. It's abrupt, looking at it now. This way. There's a stark line. Before and after. He met her and he was done with who he was before.

He wasn't happy about it. Not exactly. There's resistance. Backlash and cynicism and more than his fair share of frustration. He sees pages he abandoned and came back to. Filled up and filled in after he'd left them for a dead end. Mysteries he'd never solved.

He keeps writing. Commentary and transcription and letting his mind wander. Things about the case—about Tracy's house and the Harper case file and Blakely. He writes about that from time to time and he checks in. He checks in to see, but he's still not angry. He's still just . . . whatever he is now. Whatever this is.

He writes.

He doesn't really notice the light creeping through the window. Translucent February dawn falling across the floor and not really warming anything. He doesn't notice when his head drops to his arm. When his eyes close and sleep finally comes. When the pen falls from his hand.

He doesn't notice, but he wakes suddenly. An hour later? More, probably. His spine and the awkward hunch of his shoulders tell him that. He wakes suddenly and sees it all. Nothing of the desk visible through a layer of sheets three deep—four or more in some places—taped and stapled and clipped and spreading. Spilling off the edges and stacked on either side of the chair.

He's surrounded. The notebook—the oldest one—is all but gutted, and he's surrounded.

The last sheet is damp. Sweat and drool and _ugh. _It sticks to his elbow and he glances at it as he peels it 's mostly empty. Just a couple of words—two and two alone—and he's about to toss it. His hands are poised to crumple it tight and lob it toward the garbage. But it's her name. It's her name it stops him cold.

He lays it in the center of the desk. Smooths the edges and sighs. He traces the letters with a fingertip.

_Team Beckett._

* * *

He can't get warm. It's a cliché, but he can't.

There's no time for it. There's never any time. He hands her a cup of coffee and holds on to his own and they have thirty seconds to be grateful together. Not even that. Not even thirty seconds to be grateful that they're both alive and there might be time someday. _Someday. _

It's not enough. Thirty seconds and her fingers brushing his for a fraction of it when he hands her the coffee. Her thanks and his not-quite-cavalier dismissal. A joke and a shared smile. None of it is not enough. He can't get warm.

Neither can she. He sees it. How she lifts her hair off her neck even though it's dry now. Finally dry. The way she scrubs her palm over her collar bone to tease some color into the pale skin. He sees how she pulls her fingers into the too-long sleeves of the hoodie. Makes her body rigid and refuses to give into the chill. Neither of them can get warm, and he doesn't quite understand what it is they're doing about it.

He might be angry now. When he's not shivering all the way from the center of himself, he thinks he might be angry.

_She's not my partner. You are._

The thought of that being the last real thing he said to her—something so stupid and veiled and not what he wants to say_—_might have gotten him all the way to angry at last.

And she's asking. She finally came out and asked and there wasn't any time. Just like always, there wasn't any time.

_How close were the two of you, exactly? _

And now she's asking again and he can't get warm. He faces front. Keeps himself away from her because he can't do anything else. Because she's asking and he just wants to wrap himself around her. He wants to slam his fist against the elevator's emergency stop, strip them both to the skin, and wrap himself around her.

He's tired of there not being any time. He's tired of her waiting to ask until they're in a fucking elevator so she can have the last word in a conversation they're still not having.

He's tired of it not being someday.

He can't get warm.

They have the conversation and they don't, as usual. As completely fucking typical. He puts himself in front of her in the middle of the bullpen and doesn't care that Ryan and Esposito look like they'd gladly sell tickets. She lashes out at him in the morgue in front of Lanie. She lashes out in front of his kid and tells him to go home. Her cheeks are burning. His are, too. But neither of them can get warm.

There's a spark. There's a spark between them that warms them both a little from minute to minute. Because it always comes down to the two of them. To everything they are together. Not just the things they aren't—not yet—but the job and the fact that they're partners.

There's a tight, pleased smile when he says he's with her and he smiles back because he always smiles back. Because he can't help himself. Even when he's angry. Even when she's doubting him because he slept with someone before he even knew she _existed_, he can't help himself. He smiles back.

But it's just a spark. A tiny thing in all that darkness.

She's shivering when she turns her back on him as he's leaving. He's leaving because she told him to go. Her fingers are blue as she knots them together. She nods at Lanie's small talk and huddles further into her jacket. She's shivering.

He looks back at her from the doorway and swears he can see her breath. He swears he can see his own.

He can't get warm. Neither can she.

* * *

For once in his life, he'd like to be quiet. Given half a chance, he'd like to be quiet. He'd like every last person—every last woman in his life—to just let him be quiet.

But there's Alexis and a conversation he doesn't want to have. That he shouldn't _have_ to have because he has always kept this part of his life away from her for all kinds of reasons.

He's angry again. A flare of it in the general direction of Kate, because this is not just him spinning his own past. It's not damage control. This is his family and someone else's life and work and he's angry that she thinks the worst of him. That she assumes it's about him ducking his past and puffing himself up.

He's angry, but it sputters out into something raw and cold and closer to hopeless than he's been since he realized that she's jealous. She gave him a little solid ground and now it's buckling and rolling and gaping open beneath his feet.

He meant it in the park. He'd tell her anything. Whether it's a good idea or not. Whether he's allowed to or not.

He'd tell her anything, because he wants her to know him. She _does_ know him and he wants her to see that. To open her eyes and let herself trust that. Trust _him_. She knows him, but she doesn't want to know. She'd rather hide behind this other version of him—of them—than know. _It's really none of my business._

And then there's Sophia herself and it's just strange. There's some flare of something—satisfaction that the dressing down she gave him was a performance. Perverse, muddled gratification. Like he might as well have something to show for the grief he's getting.

But mostly he wants to be quiet. Mostly it's strange. The way she pushes and pulls like he's so easily dazzled. Like no time has passed for him at all and he hasn't lived more than a decade of his life since then. Like the same old smoke and mirrors will work.

And she thinks they do. She dictates and tries to finesse him. She brushes up against him and he's tongue tied because he can't get warm and he doesn't want her here. It hits him, startling and certain.

_It doesn't matter who she is because I'm never going to see her again_.

However he feels about her now, however he felt about her then, he doesn't want her _here._ His home. With his daughter upstairs and Kate's life on the board. He doesn't want her here, giving him orders and warnings and advice like she knows him. Like she ever knew him.

It's another echo. Her bedroom voice and strategic flashes of skin. Fleeting contact and her reaching into her bra like . . . like some dashed off femme fatale he would have written for Derrick Storm. A plot device in a pencil skirt. It should be thrilling, but it's just . . . disconcerting. It's faded and frayed around the edges and he doesn't want her here.

He just wants to be quiet.

He's tired of accounting for this version of himself. One that he shed a long time ago. He's tired of ancient sins and worn-out stories and if it's not someday, it's not back then, either.

It's here and now and he just wants to be quiet.

* * *

He sits at his desk, rocks glass and bottle at the ready, and he waits for it to come. Whatever it's going to be—guilt, sorrow, anger, humiliation, disbelief—he waits. He thinks about Sophia. His memory skips over the details. Then and now.

Nothing comes. No big emotional moment. No punctuation at the end of it. Just a desire to be busy. For his hands to be busy.

The stack of pages is still on his desk. Lopsided and weighted down with the stapler and a stray mug. He hasn't exactly had time to deal with it and there's a flare of belated panic. In his chest and his belly and his limbs.

He's sick and weak and shaking with it: It was sitting out when she was here. Sophia. Just out in the open, and she must have seen. She must have pawed through it like everything else. Like the rest of his life. Her fingers must have turned them over. Page after page. It's more than panic, then. It's disgust and fury that she touched this. Any of this.

He starts to take it all apart. Collage. Outline. Whatever it is or whatever he meant it to be. He peels tape away and pries out staples. He sets the clips aside in neat piles.

He tries to reassemble it. The original. He spreads open the nearly empty covers of the notebook and starts to piece it back together. One page. Two. Three. He sets the orphans on the other side of his desk. The burnt out shell of what he wrote when he couldn't get to angry. The holes bother him. The fragments—the old scattered thoughts that he used to think were good enough—bother him more.

He tries to reassemble it and it's worse. It's worse than looking back in the first place.

His hands work carefully at it and he watches from the outside. He feels far away from it all and he wonders what he's looking for. Why he's trying to put the notebook back together. Why he's trying to reassemble the last eleven and a half years. The year before that.

_There's no way you could have known_.

Inane, but it's the kind of thing you say. The right platitude for the right occasion. Even if the the person you're saying it to is a CIA agent. Not a CIA agent. A traitor.

She didn't say it to him. Beckett didn't. Kate didn't.

_I think that Sophia told a lot of lies. _

It's generous, but honest, too. A kindness and a compliment and a demand. Not blame and not absolution. It squeezes his heart.

His hands stop. They press into the desk and stop. He wonders if he ever said it to her. _Montgomery. _That she couldn't have known. He can't remember. There wasn't any time.

He was begging her to save herself and then her heart stopped and then she was gone for so long that he can't remember. Everything happened so fast that he can't remember whether or not he opened his mouth and something so stupid came out.

_You couldn't have known. _

It's not true. He's written it. He could have known. He _should_ have.

He's written it half a dozen times. Not just a plot twist. Not just the simple betrayal of a one-off character. The author's long con. Building investment and trust in someone. Shaping them into a person over time and space and feeling and taking it all away in an instant. He's written it again and again. Laid the breadcrumb trail and pulled the curtain back. Found the sweet spot between believable and completely obvious.

He's written it for her. Something kinder than the truth for Nikki. For Kate, though he told himself it wasn't. All summer he told himself it wasn't for her. That he was done writing for her. He told himself he was writing it for Roy. For himself. For the team. Something kinder they could all understand. Something to make sense where there was none.

He looks down at the desk and the ruins of something old. The answers aren't in the notebook, whether it's in one piece or a million, but he thinks they could have been. They could have been there to see. Eleven and a half years ago, she must have had her tells. Hesitations and inconsistencies and slips of the tongue.

They might have been there to see, but they're not in the notebook, whole or in pieces. That version of him—the version of he was tired of long before he knew—couldn't have known. That version of him was awed. Foolish. Overwhelmed and eager to believe. Desperate to escape into something else. That version of him couldn't have known.

He looks at the ruins. Old and new and, in between, the irregular shape of something else. Something he made when he couldn't get to angry. It's not much. A start at best.

He takes up the top sheet. Turns it this way and that and thinks it might be here. What he could have known. What a better version of him should have known. He lays the sheet aside and reaches for the next and the next. He smooths the tape down, fixing old pieces in place. He takes his pen and adds to this new something. He forgets about the notebook and eleven and a half years ago and everything he didn't know whether he should have or not.

So much of this—this thing he's making that's something else—comes from her. From Kate. The places where he's shored up plot bear her methodical, uncompromising stamp. All his shortcuts are gone and that's her, too. But it's not just things she's taught him. It's things he's learned from her, whether she meant him to or not. Whether or not she meant him to see.

The quick anger and compassion that runs so deep it's grabs him and carries him away sometimes. Stubbornness and the meticulous need to know. To make sense and understand, not just get the job done. Pain and resistance. Determination not to be defined by it anymore. That's new. New enough that it's been hard for him to trust it, but it's true on the page and it gives him hope. Everything here is true on the page.

All these things have found their way in and he can't help but hold on to them. They've found their way here and they'll keep. He knows they'll keep. That he won't have a single doubt in them if he comes back to them a year from now. A dozen years from now. Whatever happens between them or doesn't. Whether it's ever someday or not, he'll never doubt these things about her are true.

He turns the last page and remembers—realizes: This is what he was looking for. Whatever he was waiting for, this is what it all comes to. This is here and now and someday.

_Team Beckett._

* * *

He never quite finds a home for it.

He pulls the drawer open and thinks about the secret compartment, but that's wrong. He knows it right away.

He buys a bright purple accordion file because it seems right at the moment. But the pages are so thick and irregular with tape and staples and clips that it's an awkward fit and he hates the way the cardboard edges snag when he takes them out.

He does sometimes. He takes them out. Mostly to read. Mostly, but he adds here and there. Reverently moves pieces around.

At one point, he adds the covers of the old notebook—empty now—and it all rests together for a while in an oversized box on a high shelf in his closet.

The accordion file sits empty for a long time.

One day he throws the notebook covers away. He's cleaning out his desk, the last refuge of the procrastinator. He's supposed to be writing, but he's cleaning out his desk and a bunch of odds and ends from his early notes for Nikki Heat find their way into the accordion file.

There's not much. He doesn't write longhand all that often anymore, but he remembers these. Backs of envelopes and cramped handwriting so dense that there's barely any white peeking through. He remembers scrawling. Pen and paper awkwardly balanced on his thigh, hidden under the table, while he watched her. While he was supposed to be going through his own fan mail and he watched her and he had so much to say. When it felt like the words were pooling in his fingertips and surging off the tip of his tongue.

It pulls the corner of his mouth up into a smile when he thinks about it. The way she tried to freeze him out. How she would barely talk to him and he still had so much to say about her right from the beginning. He doesn't think he'll ever know her completely. But he started right away. He started knowing her right away.

And everything is true in its way. Incomplete. Unfinished, but true.

He trims the envelopes to rectangles. Adds the few ragged scraps of notepaper that he tore from the bottoms of things when she wasn't looking. He stacks it all into a neat pile and clips them together. Straightens the edges and lingers over them before he tucks them into the accordion file. He has a sudden impulse and goes hunting for his label maker. He punches out the letters. All caps. TEAM BECKETT.

He's sliding the file back up on the closet shelf and grabs the box all of a sudden. He peers inside at the stiff, black cardboard of the notebook covers. They feel like they don't belong. Like the new pages are something else entirely and the covers don't belong. He throws them away.

He gets anxious later and goes for them in the garbage, but they're buried under carrot peelings and broccoli stems and God knows what else. Alexis stands at the counter chopping vegetables and gives him an odd look.

She asks if he lost something.

He lets the lid of the garbage can clang shut and says no. He's not quite smiling, but he says no, and he's not anxious any more.

He piles the sheets up again. He puts them in their box and slides it back up next to the accordion file.

They're not quite home, but they can stay there a while.

* * *

_2013_

He didn't do it to punish her.

Not this, anyway. Last year, when he found out that she'd known all along—that she remembered everything about that day. . . . It's hard. It's hard to sort out what was punishment and what was survival. When he couldn't make himself leave and staying hurt so badly. He doesn't want to think about those months.

But he didn't bring back Derrick Storm to punish her.

It had just made sense given how well the graphic novels were doing and he never felt done with Nikki. Even . . . even then. In the bad months when he sat up on the roof of the loft and told himself he'd feed things to the fire. The small pile of things in the purple accordion folder. Notes for the books and all the things he wrote that had nothing to do with the books. The story of how he fell in love with her and he told himself he'd feed it to the fire.

(He didn't. He never did.)

He didn't do it to punish her, but he can't sort it out, either. One past from another from now. Eleven and a half years ago. A little more than a year ago. Today and every day since someday.

Derrick Storm is taking up a lot of his time and attention these days. There are signings and events and interviews. And he has to make sure Gina and Paula don't commit him to things he wants no part of. It's taking him away from her and the work and he hates that.

He'd hate it anyway, but it's not just being away from her. It bothers him. He doesn't think he did it to punish her, but he worries. He thinks she worries, too.

But it's good in a way. Or there are good things about it. He's back to being visible. Back to page six and the reality is he needs to be there. He worried about that, too, and he knows she did. What would happen when they had another set of lies to tell. A new host of prying eyes to avoid. He knows she still worries a little, but it's like the whole world has forgotten about Nikki Heat, and he barely even has to hedge about their relationship.

Hardly anyone asks, and when they do, it's in passing. It's a stop on the way to Clara Strike. Suddenly they want to know if Nikki wasn't the first. If he created Clara in the same way and who the mystery woman behind her might be. The old answers—the answers he's always given—don't seem to satisfy.

He resents it. He's jealous for Nikki. Jealous for Kate, even though it's silly.

He hates that he can't give the answer he wants to give. The answer he gave Kate then. That Clara started with Sophia. With what Sophia wanted him to believe. But she ended up something else. Something he'd been looking for all along but didn't realize until he met her. _Kate. _

It's not an answer he can give with half a dozen phones crowding in around him to record it, and he's thankful for the call from Danberg out of the blue. He laughs at the cover story, but there's silence on the other end, so he chokes it back and says thank you.

It sounds so fake. The few details are arranged just so and he wonders who'll believe it. But Danberg tells him flatly that's the cover and, sure enough, the press eats it up. He says he only recently got clearance to talk about it and they eat it up.

Kate snorts and rolls her eyes the first time she hears it. They're heading out of the precinct at the end of the day and there's a young woman he vaguely remembers. Lydia or Laura or something. She writes for a site with a handful of people covering everything. Crime and books and theater. Local interest and everything under the sun. He remembers thinking she's good. That he's liked a couple of things she's written, so he stops when she tries to catch his attention.

Kate walks a few steps on, and he worries at first that she'll go entirely. But she nods at him and lingers not too far away. Listening. She's listening. He spends a few minutes with the reporter and hopes she doesn't notice that he can't stop sneaking looks at Kate. He can't stop looking at her, even though she's rolling her eyes.

She's rolling her eyes, but there's something familiar about the way she shoves her hands in her pockets and hunches into her collar. She gives him an exasperated smile and shakes her head, at something especially ridiculous from Danberg, but she's a little lost, too. She's shivering like she can't get warm, and he knows she's thinking about it. He knows she remembers and she still wonders, because they put it away and never really talked about it.

He turns his attention back to the reporter. Laura, he thinks. She just told him, but he's already forgotten. He rushes her through her questions and feels a pang of guilt, but he wants to go. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Kate shiver, and he just wants to go.

He thinks about the box on his closet shelf. The accordion file. He thinks about them and watches her. She's holding her elbows and turning her face away from the wind and he knows then. He knows he wants to give it to her. All of it. He wants her to have the story.

He wants her to know that he didn't do it to punish her.

* * *

They talk a little that night. Lying in the dark of her bedroom, she asks about Danberg and something else he's not expecting.

"When did you start?" She runs her fingernails in a long line down his side.

It's deliberate. A calculated distraction that only half works. He shivers. Catches her hand and stills it against his hip.

He thinks about it as he kisses the tip of her chin. There's a longer answer, but it's not the right one for now. He tells her the most important part. The truth. "Last year. Gary Harper and Tracy McGrath."

"Oh," she says, and if he didn't know her as well as he does, he wouldn't hear the catch in her voice. "That makes sense."

He can feel her frowning. Her shoulders tighten and she rolls away from him on to her back. She wasn't expecting him to know what she was talking about. She wanted it to be out of the blue. She wanted to catch him off guard. To talk about it and not talk about it. He anchors and arm across her waist and flips on to his stomach. He twines one foot between hers and won't let her go too far.

"Not like that," he says into her shoulder. "Not because of her."

She pulls her lip between her teeth and stares up at the ceiling while he stares up at her. He waits. Feels her ribs rising and falling under his cheek. Three breaths go by with no words. He waits. Four. He's just about to say something because he doesn't think she will and he wants her to have the story.

She tips her head down and looks him in the eye. "Not because of her?"

He shakes his head and smiles. "Not because of her."

"Ok," she says and shivers a little.

He reaches across her and tugs the comforter higher over both of them. He rubs his palm down her arm to smooth away the goosebumps.

He thinks about saying more. He wants to give her the story and he thinks maybe he should say more. But she says ok again and he believes her. She wriggles closer to and tucks her hands against his body to warm them and he believes her.

* * *

He's on a plane flipping through a _Skymall _catalog when he finds a home for it. A home for all of it, finally. He's relieved. He's been anxious. It's time. It's long past time and he wants them to talk about this. He wants her to have the story and this is how he can give it to her.

It's a little ridiculous. More than a little ridiculous, but it's right, too.

God knows she doesn't need another coat. Neither of them needs another coat. But they're so cool and he has to have them. One for each of them. Dozens and dozens of pockets and loops and buttons and magnets and they're so _cool_.

He calls as soon as he's on the ground. They're awesome, but not exactly right. They will be, though. They'll be perfect.

He calls. He wheedles and charms and gets shuffled around. Everyone he talks to sounds surprised. They all agree. Some sooner than others, but they all agree they can do what he wants and every time, there's a surprised pause on the other end. He rushes in with thanks and asks for the next thing. It'll take a while, but he gets them to bend on that, too. He has something in mind and they have to be ready on time.

It's all squared away. It's a string of promises that all hinge on one another. A lot has to go right, but he knows it will. It has to.

It has a home. It all finally has a home.

* * *

It's late. It's _so _late. They were supposed to be here yesterday, but there was a hold up. The call didn't come until early evening and the woman was so apologetic—so invested in his crazy little project—that he didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She offered to send them anyway. He could have had them and sent them back in, just for a day or so, but it's the most important part. The _best _part.

So he said he'd wait. She promised them today. This morning, first thing. But something else came up and her assistant called, somber to the point of grief, and he _is _laughing now. It's a little hysterical, but he's laughing, because there's something like eleven people who don't even know her, but they want this to happen almost as badly as he does. Almost.

They're here now. Finally, here, but he's hardly had any time to get things together and it's _late. _

The packaging is everywhere. It was amazing, the presentation, but he needs it gone. He has his own plans. He needs it all gone and there's tissue to be pulled out of each and every pocket and there are brightly colored cloth tags sewn on loosely and hand lettered, each one explaining the function of a particular piece. Each pocket or flap or loop. He wants the tags all gone. He needs them all gone and it's so late.

He saws at the last of the tags with manicure scissors. He's vaguely aware there's some kind of sewing tool for this. He tore apart his mother's costume storage looking, but he couldn't find anything that looked likely. The tag flutters to the ground and he dashes into his office.

All this is ready at least. It's all laid out and he starts on the coat. He reaches for the handcuffs first and grins. He runs a finger over the fuzzy material—black and orange stripes—and grins. He'll pay for these. Oh, he'll _pay._

He thumbs open the magnetic flap near the belt line and loops the cuffs over the cord inside. He lets the flap snap back in place and experiments. As advertised, they're easily accessible from both inside and outside the coat. He feels the weight they add and grins.

He stows away the gadgets next: A compact flashlight that's supposed to be better for night vision. A Kennedy half dollar that breaks apart into a knife. Three or four other things that she'll try not to laugh at and then his favorite: A spy pen with a camera and voice recorder. It's a crappy pen, but how cool is that? And she's nowhere near as big a pen snob as he is anyway.

He zips the spy pen into the special pocket along the placket and turns to the rest. To the story he wants to give her. The story he's made a home for here. But he falters all of a sudden. He doesn't know where to start with it.

They're all set out. All the pages and pieces in their different shapes and sizes now. He's spent days folding them. Going on weeks at this point, he realizes. There are snug paper football shapes and complicated self-contained envelopes that should unfurl into a single sheet when she tugs just squares with satisfying heft and thin strips rolled into tight cylinders. They're all set out.

Every one has been folded and rolled and made with the pockets in mind. He has a diagram—a blueprint of it all so that she'll pull them out in the right order. The old things first. The things he cut and scrawled and clipped and stapled. Old things made new when he couldn't get to angry and he couldn't get her out of his mind. All these hollow old moments he filled up that make the story just as much hers as it is his.

And then the new things. The first glimmerings of Nikki with their wide open truth. All his wonderings and observations and the first things he loved about her. The things he loved about her so much that he had to make them into something and put it out into the world.

He has a plan for it all, and he should just start stowing them away, but his hands won't work. He's worried about what's inside each one. He's worried about every word and whether any of it is good enough. He sits with the coat across his knees and he can't make himself move. It seems like forever and he can't make himself move.

He's always worried. Every time, he's pumped up with bravado and self-importance, but he's worried underneath. But this is worse. Way worse.

She doesn't really want to go. It's not the big launch party for _Storm Front, _but it's the one that matters, and she doesn't really want to go. She's been better since the night they talked—kind of talked—but she's still quiet about the whole thing and she doesn't want to go. It's his thing, she says, and she should probably just hang back.

That's what gets his hands moving again. The ridiculous notion that anything of his isn't hers, too. That he could have done it without her.

He wants her to see. He wants her to know how much a part she is of everything he writes. Everything he does, really, but this is something he has to show for it and he wants her to know.

He tucks away the first page. Tugs the zipper closed and reaches for the next and the next and the next. His hands are moving faster now and he likes the weight of the fabric. He likes the pull and tug of the different fasteners and satisfying snick of magnets and snaps and latches. He likes the way it becomes hers in his hands. It's not something new. Not anymore. It's hers and it's where all these things belong.

He likes the weight in his hands and it comes back to him. The excitement. The feeling that this is right. That the words are right and the coat is home and this is the way he gives her the story.

He's caught up in it. So caught up in it that he doesn't hear her come in. All of a sudden she's filling the doorway of his office. She's in black. Something simple with a deep neckline and a hem that falls to mid-thigh. It fits close and she is a long, elegant line, an endless curve against the upright of the bookcase. Her hair is up, just a few long waves framing her face and brushing her shoulders, and she's incredible. She's just incredible.

"Castle, you're not even _dressed_." She advances on him and he realizes that she may be incredible, but she's terrifying, too. "What the _hell_?"

He catches sight of the dial on his watch and almost falls off the desk chair. It's _so _late. He looks up at her with wide eyes. "Kate. It's _so_ late."

Her eyes narrow and she sputters. She's incredulous enough that she can't get her words going right away and he takes advantage. He pushes up from the chair and drapes the coat over one arm. He catches her around the waist with the other and tugs her to him. She tugs back, but he has the element of surprise on his side. He kisses her on the mouth and ducks his head to drag his lips down her throat.

"You're beautiful," he murmurs. "So beautiful. And it's _so _late. I'm so glad you're coming with me. And this is for you."

He presses the coat into her hands and backs away, grinning.

"Castle," she looks down at the dark fabric and back at him. She lifts it like she's surprised at the weight and her brow furrows. She's frustrated and still pissed and now confused joins the mix.

"I'll be quick," he calls over his shoulder as he spins through the doorway to the bedroom.

"You're _never_ quick," she snaps.

His head pops into the doorway again. "Hmm. I haven't noticed you complaining, Detective. But I _can _be quick when the situation calls for it."

* * *

He hates every tie he owns, which is saying something. They're littering the floor of the closet and form an irregular trail to the bathroom. His hair is dripping all over them—it's dripping everywhere, actually—and at this point, even if he wanted to wear one, he's screwed. He catches sight of himself in the mirror and realizes that the shoulders of his shirt are soaked, too. _Shit. _

He strips off the shirt and kicks it with the ties into the corner of the room. He'll have to bundle it all up for the dry cleaners and where the hell did the towel go? He finds it neatly draped over a hanger in the closet. He scrubs at the apparently useless thing above his shoulders and pulls on another shirt.

He tucks it into his pants once he finally has the buttons lined up and flicks through his jackets. He hates all those, too, but he needs something. Hopefully something that will work without a tie. Everything is stripes. Why does he have so many stripes?

He grabs what seems like the best option—stripes, but at least they're muted—and shrugs into it. He stuffs his feet into shoes and heads for the office, trying not to trip over the flapping laces.

"Hey, can I go without a tie in this?" he says in a rush as he steps through the doorway. "Please say yes, because they're all . . ."

He stops. She's curled in one of the arm chairs with her feet tucked up, a pair of strappy heels tipped over and forgotten on the floor. She has the coat draped over most of her lap, and there's a sea of paper spread around her. All his shapes carefully smoothed flat and laid out around her like she wants to see them all at once.

She tips her head up eagerly and smiles at him, wide and happy—so happy—and his stomach flips. She sets down the paper she's holding. One of the oversized, bulky ones, and she has to settle it just so to keep it from toppling off the arm. She reaches her hand out toward him wordlessly.

He stumbles toward her and she clears a space on the arm of the chair for him. She gathers up the pages and her brow furrows as she looks around for somewhere to put them. He reaches for them, but she holds on as if she's reluctant to let them go.

He looks down at her curiously. "Just gonna set them on the desk."

"But I can . . . I can have them back?" she shoots him a warning look as her voice catches. Like she's daring him to bring it up.

"Of course," he says as he takes them from her. She can't keep her eyes form following as he sets them down. Then he realizes. Then he gets it. "They're yours, Kate."

Her eyes go so wide that he only just catches himself before a laugh sneaks out.

"Oh," she says finally. "Oh." She reaches her hand out again and tugs him down on to the arm of the chair.

He balances himself on one hip and reaches behind her to prop a fist on the opposite arm. He leans down to kiss the top of her spine. He presses his lips against her skin to keep quiet. He wants to say something. He wants to ask. If she likes it. If she sees. If she understands that she makes him better and he can't do this without her.

But her fingers are eager at the pockets and flaps and she's smiling and tossing comments over her shoulder to him. And then she's quiet and nibbling on her lip and thoughtful. He runs his hand up and down her back and lets her read.

She whips her head around all of a sudden. "Are these spoilers? Are you spoiling me?"

"No!" he says quickly, then thinks about it. "Not . . . I don't think so. They're not even outline stuff. And . . . " He can't help adding it. She'll make him pay, but he can't help it. "You could have read the advance copy."

"Never again." Her head swivels away from him. "I don't trust you, Mr. Castle."

"I changed _one _minor detail," he protests.

"Minor!" She snorts. "You had Petar in a location that would have made it impossible for him to . . ."

He leans in quickly and silences her with a kiss. "An oversight—a _minor _oversight—caught by my brilliant partner that I was able to fix before it went to the final print."

She twists away from him. Her eyes are sparkling and she's more than ready to string the argument out, but she stops when she sees the look on his face. His head is tipped down and his fingers are worrying at the buttonhole on his jacket. She lays a hand gently on his knee and his eyes come up to meet hers.

"Can't do it without you, Kate. Nikki. Derrick Storm. Any of it. I . . ." He pauses, at a rare loss for words. "I'm better at this now . . . ever since I met you . . . I'm better. And I'm glad you're coming with me tonight."

She raises up a little on her knees. She hooks one arm around his neck. The page in her hand crinkles against his shoulder, but she pulls him in for a long kiss anyway.

"I'm glad, too," she murmurs as she pulls away. "But we're going to be so late."

He chases after her. Plucks the page from her hand and leans over her to set it on the floor as his lips seek the bare skin of her shoulder. "Guests of honor. They'll wait."

"Castle!" She laughs and turns her head away, but she has a hold of his jacket with both hands and she's tugging him closer.

"Can we really be late?" she asks in a low voice.

He swallows hard and nods. "We can definitely be late."

"Good," she breathes against his cheek. "Then I can finish reading."

She shoves him firmly enough that he loses his balance and slides off the arm. He manages to catch himself before he actually hits the floor and control his fall. His head pops up, and he has every intention of going after her again, but she's playing with one of the inside pockets, snicking and unsnicking the flap.

"Magnets," she says with a grin. "I love the magnets."

He sighs. There's no defense against her when she's cute. There's no defense against her, _period_, but especially not when she's cute. He scoots around to the front of the chair and leans his back against it. She slides her fingers into his hair and he tips his head against her knee.

Her hand idly strokes his head. It's awkward, pulling the stiff little shapes out and unfolding them with only one hand, but they both seem to want the contact. She lets out soft laughs and disbelieving snorts and the occasional question. He answers and takes the pages from her as she finishes, making a careful pile.

She's . . . thrilled with it. There's no other word. Her voice is low and excited and her breath catches every so often. She's thrilled and he's quiet. Solemn and quiet and so glad that it means something to her like it does to him.

But she's nearly to the end. It's the last of the old things and he finds his heart is pounding. He thinks about those early days. What an ass he was. How badly he wanted her. Like he could have her and it would burn him up. Burn her out of him and he'd be over her. He'd stop wanting more. From her. From himself and the book and his life. He turns his head and presses a kiss to the bare skin just below the hem of her dress.

"Castle." She tugs at his hair a little irritably, but he looks up at her and her fingers relax. "You ok?"

He nods, but she's not convinced.

"Do we need to go? I can . . ." She trails off and runs a regretful hand over the coat.

"No." He grabs for her fingertips and kisses them. He nudges her hand back toward the coat. "No, go ahead."

She smoothes a palm down his cheek and gives him a long look. He nods again and she believes him this time. She works open the next pocket. It's long and narrow with a top flap and she pulls out a thin cylinder.

She flattens it along her thigh and peers down at it. "This is . . . there's so much. I can hardly read . . ." She breaks off suddenly and looks at him. He's watching her, but doesn't seem inclined to say anything. Her eyes travel back to the paper. She takes it delicately between her fingertips and moves it into the light and reads the first line. "Justice. You can hear the capital letter every time she says it."

She looks down at him and he's grinning now. She wants to flick his ear. She wants to kiss him. She wants to hide. A blush creeps over her. Her cheeks and collar bones are bright and warm with it.

She shifts uncomfortably and he lays a heavy hand on her thigh. He tips his head back and wraps his fingers around her wrist. He pulls her hand toward him and kisses her palm. "Still can. Every time."

"Castle, I . . . this . . ." She holds the paper out to him.

He takes it from her and catches her hand again. He sets the paper aside. Starts another pile and takes her hand in both her own. "There's a lot. You don't have to read it now. But I wanted you to know. Last year . . ." He thinks about it. "Still. I still want you to know that it's never been like it is with us. For me . . ."

He trails off, frustrated with his own stumbling words. She slips from the chair to the floor. Swings her knees over his thighs and presses close to his side. She still has the coat clutched in her hand and the skirt of it spreads over both of them.

He wraps his arm around her and gives her a grateful squeeze. "It's never been like this with anyone. Right from the start."

She's quiet, but she presses closer to him and it's better than words.

He doesn't want to move. He wants to stay like this with her. He wants to watch her read every word and tell her what it was like, knowing her. Falling in love with her. But there's time. He knows there's time and they really ought to go.

"I love your books." She says it quietly. Just as he's about to turn to her, and his mouth snaps shut. "For a long time. Since my mom died. I could count on them. I knew I could get the newest one or reread the ones I already had and I could just . . . escape for a while. They made me think and let me get out of my own head and I've loved them for a long time."

She goes quiet again and he doesn't know what to do. He wants to crush her against him and fall at her feet and drag her off to the bedroom. He doesn't know what to do, so he kisses her forehead and whispers, "Thank you. Thank you for telling me."

She tilts her chin up and kisses the corner of his mouth. "Don't be a jerk about it, ok?"

He laughs and wraps his other arm around her. "I'll try."

She pulls her knees up and slips the coat off their laps. She folds it in half and smooths a hand over the fabric. "We should probably go."

"Probably," he agrees. "You can read the rest later. Or whenever you want."

"Later," she agrees. "Together."

He nods and tries to not to grin like an idiot. "But you have to see the best part first!"

"You mean I haven't seen that already?" Her hands are a blur and all of a sudden she's dangling the open cuffs in front of his nose. They're close enough that the cheap fake fur tickles and he has to stifle a sneeze.

"No! No . . . those . . ." He scrambles backward, but she drops to her hands and knees and crawls after him and that's hardly fair. "Those are a _highlight_, but not . . . not the best part."

He yelps as her hand closes around his ankle and she pulls herself toward him. She's flipping one cuff through itself. Circling the hinge and the ratcheting noise is the worst combination of a threat and a promise.

"Beckett!" he whimpers. "Beckett! I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, but . . ."

She gives him a hard look and flips the cuffs in her hand, overlapping the bracelets and setting them aside. "I know. We have to go. But there's going to be a conversation about the fun fur."

"Definitely," he gulps. He's relieved. He's disappointed. He thinks about calling in a bomb threat to the party venue. "A conversation."

She rocks back on to her heels and it really should defuse the tension, but it doesn't. Her skirt pulls taut over her thighs and that neckline is fantastic and a bomb threat still sounds reasonable. She folds her arms over her chest and that's not helping. "So what's the 'best thing'."

It's too good a set up. He skitters back over to her and slides his hands over her shoulders. He kisses her. "You are. You're the best thing."

"Sap!" She rolls her eyes and pushes him away, but her eyes are shining and she's smiling wide.

"Yes. I am a sap." He lets her go and pushes himself to his feet. "Wait right here."

He dashes through the living room and wrestles the box from the front hall closet. They arrived so late and he needed to get hers together, so he's hardly had time to look at his own. He tears off the plastic as he rushes back into the office.

She sees the coat and holds up a hand. "Tell me they don't match."

He looks from the coat to her. "No. Well, yes, but no. I mean . . . . all the pockets and stuff, yeah, because they're _so cool_. But this is the 'Expedition' and yours is a trench coat because . . ." He gives her a heated look. "Trench coat. But they're not, like uniforms . . . well they kind of are, but they don't _match. _And it's the best part!"

She's laughing as he drops back to the floor next to her and nudges her attention toward the coat lying next to her. He spreads his own across his lap, front down, and watches as she does the same. He runs his finger along an almost invisible seam just below the shoulders. Her finger follows the same path on her own and she looks up at him, surprised.

"Magnets," he says, waggling his eyebrows. "On three?"

She presses her lips together. He can tell she wants to roll her eyes, but she's indulging him and he really, really wants to call in that bomb threat.

"One . . ." He nods to her

"Two . . ." She replies. She does roll her eyes, then. She's only human.

"Three!"

They tug in unison. A large square of fabric comes free and doubles back. Another strip of magnets catches the weight of the first and the flap seals neatly to the back of each coat, exposing a stretch of embroidery underneath. Silvery thread that reflects the low light. Familiar fat, blocky letters: TEAM BECKETT.


	10. Up and Away, 1 x 10

Title: Up and Away (1x10)

WC: ~7500

Summary: "Because it feels like nothing even when he writes. And he _does_ write. He writes a little. He goes over his notes. He's swimming in notes even though it's hardly been two months." An interlude between Seasons 1 and 2.

Spoilers: Set just after A Death in the Family 1 x 10 and before Significant Others 5 x 10; reference to 'Till Death Do Us Part 4 x 11. Very minor spoilers, though.

A/N: This chapter is for Cora Clavia, who generously loaned me the idea. We were fan girling over _Up,_ and I realized it came out during the first Caskett estrangement.

* * *

_2009_

It's all Alexis's fault.

He knew the day would come. He just hadn't expected the Lear years to start at sixteen. Or whatever the twenty-first century equivalent of Shakespearian sixteen is. Although Cordelia might have been sixteen. Or was that Juliet?

It doesn't matter. She's _so _not Cordelia anyway. Oh, she put up a good front. Played the dutiful daughter for 15 years, and then: _Betrayal._

Sudden betrayal and he's staring down into a jumbo tub of popcorn with double butter and a box of Milk Duds mixed in. An unfamiliar, vaguely nauseated feeling comes over him. He doesn't want any more. He could not possibly eat another delicious piece and the movie hasn't even started. He's become everything he hates and it is all Alexis's fault.

She refused to come with him. Said she'd already been his beard once for this movie and he was on his own. He doesn't need a beard. He's man enough to love Disney movies unapologetically, and anyway it's Pixar, which is totally for grown ups. He doesn't need a beard. It's just that they've only seen it in one of the possible flavors of 3D so far. They haven't even seen it in _2D_ yet, like they always do, and she's abandoned him.

Because apparently he's embarrassing. Apparently the fact that he's sensitive enough to cry at what Manohla Dargis called a "flawlessly realized love story" told with "extraordinary tenderness" is embarrassing. It's _embarrassing_ to his only daughter and she's too cool to be seen with him.

He tosses another handful of popcorn into his mouth defiantly. An errant Milk Dud nearly chokes him. He sits up and swallows hard, then rides the wave of nausea. He really can't eat any more. It's only the previews and this is all Alexis's fault.

Well, it's _mostly_ her fault. That snotty, acne-riddled kid behind the counter gets some of the blame, too. Because what was he supposed to do? They always, always, _always _get the biggest possible tub. And the Milk Duds sprinkled in? A total taste and texture _sensation. _And of course they needtwo giant drinks to wash it all down. That's always their order.

_Always. _And, yeah, he's kind of on autopilot here, but what was he supposed to do? Cave to that little twit? Change it after _that _eye roll and that pointed "Will that be _all _for you, sir?" _No way, punk._ It's the principle of the thing.

And he's kind of on autopilot, which is why he's at the movies in the first place. He's been on autopilot for a couple of weeks now and he's not thinking about that. At all.

Because there's nothing to think about. At all. It's just a mood. A foul mood he can't shake. That he hasn't been able to shake for twenty-four days—not that he's counting, because he's _not_—and it leaves him good for nothing. It leaves him feeling . . . unsettled. Like he's at loose ends. Like he should be doing something more important.

That shouldn't be a challenge. Doing something more important than nothing should not be a challenge.

But he doesn't _usually _do nothing. He writes. And when he's not doing that, he researches. A lot. It's his _job,_ and it's important, even if it _looks _like he's doing nothing. Even if it looks like he's just staring creepily or whatever, it's not usually nothing.

Except lately it is. Lately it's pretty much nothing. Or it feels that way. Even when he's doing something, it feels that way, and he's not thinking about that at all, either. He's not thinking why it might feel like that all of a sudden.

Because it feels like nothing even when he writes. And he _does_ write. He writes a little. He goes over his notes. He's swimming in notes even though it's hardly been two months.

He should be organizing them. Rearranging and transcribing and transferring them on to the storyboard. He's always been good at that. At creating the illusion of productivity. The illusion of doing _something. _He's always been able to sell that to himself, even when he knows deep down that he's procrastinating. That he won't _really_ do anything until the deadline looms and the pressure is on.

But now it feels like he's doing nothing. He reads the notes. Over and over he reads them, but every time he tries to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard there's a nagging voice that tells him he should be doing something more important.

A voice that says that what he does—what he's done for nearly twenty years now—isn't enough.

That what he's been doing up 'till now is nothing.

* * *

They're ruining it for him. Every black silhouette blotting out part of the screen. Every inane conversation at top volume. Every clumsy idiot tripping and spilling and banging into seat after seat while they run back and forth to the bathroom, to the concession stand, to wherever.

Like the posted start time wasn't ten minutes ago. Like they haven't been sitting there for the last twenty minutes—twenty minutes during which they could have been taking care of all those things—filling the assembled company in on the minutiae of their sad, _boring_ lives. They're ruining it. They're all _ruining_ it.

He doesn't get people who skip the previews. He thinks they probably look up crossword clues and cheat at online Spades and pee on the seat without wiping it off. He thinks they're sociopaths, and right now they just keep coming. It's like a clown car. A clown car full of preview-avoiding sociopaths who probably stopped by the bathroom first to pee on the seats, thus conveniently missing more previews.

He loves previews. He and Alexis are firmly of the opinion that previews are an integral part of the movie-going experience. _Totally. _They make up outrageous spoilers if the movie looks really bad. They trade outlandish, on-the-spot rumors about the cast and crew in loud whispers and go stone-faced and innocent when someone whips around to shoot them dirty looks. They laugh at the weird things juxtaposed on the same reel and try to string them together with storyline of their own.

Except not lately.

They don't do much of that lately. She's busy and he's been out at all hours for the last two months. Has been, but isn't any more. But she's still busy.

And the last couple times it's like her heart hasn't been in it. Like she doesn't want to get there half an hour early and be the first ones in the theater so they can have their pick of the seats. Dead center. Always dead center.

Lately it's like she's having second thoughts about the Milk Duds and she's humoring him with the spoilers and the rumors and the unified master storyline. It's not just this time. Not just this movie and one sob. One admittedly _really _loud sob.

She's growing up. She's growing out of their rituals. She _is_ embarrassed by him and she _ought_ to be. It's the way it ought to go and he knows that. He _knows_ it and he's proud of her, but it's just . . .

He loves the movies and he doesn't get to go that often and who will he go with now?

His mother, once in a while, but she won't play any of the preview games and she doesn't even _like _butter on her popcorn and Milk Duds are out entirely. Plus, she can't shut it off. It's a constant stream of professional commentary with her, and he isn't _nearly _that bad when she's reading something. No matter what she says, when she's genuinely enjoying a book, he keeps his mouth shut. He _mostly_ keeps his mouth shut. He tries.

Movie dates are pretty much out. He hasn't been on one since . . . Kyra maybe? Not since five-dollar film festivals on campus. Maybe a couple of times with Meredith, but she never had much of an attention span. And Gina wouldn't be caught dead in a movie theater that didn't have a red carpet leading into it.

It can't have been that long. It can't go back as far as Kyra, but movie dates are out now anyway. Not exactly a Richard Castle–level experience, and what's the point in finding out right away that the woman in question doesn't like previews or Milk Duds or sitting in the exact middle of the theater? What's the point in having it be over before it starts?

It's not really Alexis's fault. It's just bad timing. It's just this mood he can't shake. This feeling that he's doing nothing and he can't even enjoy it.

His head lolls against the back of the seat and he watches the latecomers go by. He doesn't bother trying to keep his eyes on the previews because they're _ruining_ it.

He shifts his gaze from aisle to aisle and all of a sudden he sees her.

All of a sudden, there she is.

His face breaks out in a huge smile. He can feel it. His cheeks ache with it and he lets out a breath he thinks he must have been holding for twenty-four days. His hand moves to flag her down and he's shifting the popcorn tub off the seat next to him and her name is on his lips and it almost slips out.

_Almost. _

And then he remembers. He remembers her smile fading. He remembers thinking it was gone for good. That one, anyway. The one for him. Small and wary and reluctant, but for him.

He remembers her receding. The stark white frame of the hospital hallway and her receding. Strong shoulders draped in bright blue. Something softer than her usual squared off blazers and tailored blouses. He remembers her going.

He remembers that they're done. That she warned him and he didn't listen. That it's been twenty-four days and the silence has been absolute.

They're done.

* * *

She looks different. He tells himself it's just that she's out of context. That the faded, soft-looking jeans and stretched out sweatshirt are just Beckett out of uniform. That she can't have changed _that _much in twenty-four days. That he can't have missed much.

But she looks different. Her hair is longer. He thinks so anyway. It _seems _longer and she has it scraped back into this bristly little pony tail that skims the hood of her sweatshirt.

She stops in the aisle two rows in front of him and turns. He hunches down in his seat. He hugs the popcorn to his chest and leans as far out of the light as he can. He's suddenly terrified that she'll see him and . . . and _what?_ She'll yell at him?

She won't yell. He wishes she'd yell. He wishes that she'd yelled then and gotten it out of her system. But she didn't and she won't now. She won't yell and he's not afraid of that anyway.

He's afraid she'll look right through him. He's afraid she'll go. He's afraid she's already gone for good.

She's not looking at him at all, though, and he unfolds a little. He's curious. He's always curious about her. Her eyes are fixed on a seat two rows in front of him. Exactly two rows in front of him. It's full. All the seats around it are full of chattering teenage girls and he almost laughs at the look on her face.

She's annoyed. Righteously annoyed. He studies her. She doesn't have any snacks and he knows she has a sweet tooth. He knows that much. Her wallet is still in her hand like she rushed in, and he thinks that's what the ponytail is about, too. He thinks that's what this casual version of Beckett is about.

She's careful about her appearance. He's never seen her looking anything less than entirely put together. Understated and neutral, but careful. This feels like a last-minute decision.

It's not her usual movie-going MO. He can tell. She looks harried and annoyed. Like this isn't how she does things. She doesn't skip the previews. Not usually. He can tell. And she has a seat that's hers. _Hers,_ and right this minute, she's wondering if she has probable cause to roust Courtney or Stephanie or whatever the kid's name is, because that's _her _seat.

She pulls her lip between her teeth. He sets the popcorn aside and leans forward eagerly. He silently urges her on. He wants her to do it. He pictures her flashing her badge. Does she have her badge? Her gun? Does she take that stuff to the movies?

He doesn't know. He really doesn't know and he _wants _to. He wants to and he can't believe he didn't find that out. How is he ever supposed to write Nikki Heat if he doesn't know stuff like that?

He decides she does. Nikki does. So does Beckett. Imaginary Beckett, anyway, and right now he wants to see Beckett Actual hauling the blonde up by the shoulder, flashing tin, and telling her to find another seat.

She doesn't, though. Of course she doesn't. She takes the aisle seat in the short row to the right and that's good for him. It's a perfect sight line for him, but she cranks her body toward the middle of the theater, and he knows she hates it. He knows she likes to sit exactly center just like him.

It makes him smile. Like they're sharing something. Like they could go to the movies together and just fall in step. However stupid it is, it makes him smile.

"Ex_cuse_ me."

The voice jerks him out of the fantasy. The voice is annoyed. He registers the fact that it belongs to someone who's been standing there a while.

"Yeah?" he snaps without really looking.

"Is this seat taken?"

He stifles a sigh and looks. It's a youngish guy in a meticulously disheveled thrift store outfit that probably cost a fortune. He's gesturing at the bucket of popcorn occupying the seat to Castle's left and no. _Hell _no. He is _not _sitting next to this clown.

_Sorry, pal, no sociopathic preview-skipping clowns allowed._

Castle tears his attention away from Beckett and looks the hipster in the eye.

"Yes, it's taken," he says pointedly. "I'm waiting for someone."

* * *

She scoots way down in the seat and braces her knees against the one in front of her. She doesn't exactly pull her hood up, but it's bunched high around her ears. She makes herself small and he thinks that's weird. _Odd._ There's nothing small about Kate Beckett.

The familiar music swells. Tinkerbell makes her way around the iconic castle. He tears his attention away from her.

He tries.

He _tries_, but she's right there. Right _there_. He could slide into the seat behind her. Clamber over her and plop down next to her. (There's no question in his mind as to who gets the aisle seat. She gets the aisle seat. Obviously.)

She's right there. Close enough that he could bean her with a piece of popcorn or a Milk Dud or a supercluster of pieces held together by slightly melted chocolate and the questionable caramel center. He wouldn't, but he could.

He_ probably _wouldn't_. _

He might_. _He thinks he might. If he thought it would do any good—if it would get her to talk to him—he might do it. He might throw movie theater concessions at her head if he thought would do any good at all. But it won't, and he tears his attention away from her.

He tries to tear his attention away, but she's smiling now. This secret little thing with her fist against her chin like she's half trying to hide it. But she can't. It's bigger than her. All her smiles are and she has no idea. Even the small one—the wary, reluctant one that used to be for him—is bigger than her and he wonders if anyone is following the short. If anyone but her has any attention to spare for the raincloud's crisis.

He doesn't.

But then her smile widens and she gives this delighted, silent little clap and his head swivels back and forth between her and the screen. He can't remember what the upshot of this one is. The short. Something about storks and prickly, dangerous babies?

He doesn't know what she's cheering for and he wants to know. He's frustrated and desperate and he misses her.

The air goes out of him and he sinks into his seat. The realization—the truth is heavy on him—and he sinks with it. He misses her. He misses the work, and everything feels like nothing, and that's not a coincidence.

He might throw something at her after all.

His eyes are on the screen now. He doesn't have to tear his attention away.

He misses her. How fucking stupid is _that? _He hardly knows her. She's been _not _talking to him for almost as long as she's been talking to him. Especially when you factor in how much of the two months she spent trying _not _to talk to him. It's _stupid. _

It's really the work. He tells himself that it's really the work he misses and that's why everything feels like nothing. And it's true. That has something to do with it. A lot to do with it.

But he misses her.

He misses her and she's right there.

* * *

He's a wreck before Carl even appears on the screen. This was a mistake. His head feels tight. It weighs a thousand pounds and this was a mistake. A movie was a good idea. _This_ movie was not. This movie was a spectacularly bad idea. He should have seen _Wolverine_ again. That's how bad an idea this was.

He feels the tears gathering at the back of his throat long before Carl's balloon sails through the ceiling of the dilapidated house, but the first one falls then. He swipes at it angrily and swallows hard. He doesn't look at her.

By the time Ellie riffles through the blank pages in her adventure book and tells Carl she's saving them, the tears are falling fast and he can't look at much of anything. He can hardly see. He misses her and this was a mistake. A bad idea.

He worries the napkin in his hand and tries to find a corner that's at least relatively butter free. He gives up and uses his sleeve. His fingers are salty and his eyes burn and she's right there and he misses her.

He thinks the unthinkable. He thinks about going. Getting up and walking out of a movie he loves. Climbing over everyone in his row and walking out because it's too much.

Being here alone and feeling useless. It's too much. Feeling like he's doing nothing and having her right there and knowing she's gone. She warned him and he didn't listen and now she's gone. It's too much.

He looks at her. It's too much and he can't help himself anymore. He looks at her.

He stares.

She's crying. It's not even sad yet. Ellie and Carl are daydreaming on the hilltop and the clouds make themselves into fantastic shapes and they still have their whole lives before them and she's crying.

Sobbing, actually, though it takes him a minute to realize. She's made herself so small in the seat. Her arms are hugging her knees and her feet are braced on the back of the seat in front of her and it takes him a minute to realize that her shoulders are shaking and she's _sobbing. _

He looks down at the crumpled napkin in his hand and feels the ridiculous urge to go to her. To offer it. To offer her something.

And then she laughs. She laughs and drags the sleeve of her sweatshirt over her face and he knows it's ugly. It's an ugly, snorting thing stuck between laughing and crying. It has to be ugly. Even for her, it has to be.

His eyes dart to the screen because he wants to know. He wants to know what can make her laugh in a moment like this. It's the first time the balloons lift Carl's cart from the ground. Ellie in her guide outfit and Carl's heavy elbow grounding the balloon cart. He laughs, too.

He remembers how Alexis told him in no uncertain terms that he was _not_ allowed to take his Herman Miller chair and a helium tank up to the roof of the building. How she told him no when he suggested an armchair and his mother's bed and the divan and one of the kitchen barstools. How she stopped telling him no and just glared.

He wants to tell Beckett that story. He wants to lean over to her and whisper the short version. He wants to grab a burger or a drink after the movie and tell her the long version. He wants to stay out late with her on a school night.

He wants to know her.

He settles back into his seat. He misses her, but he feels less alone because she's crying and laughing and so is he. So is he.

He watches the movie. He watches her. She never stops crying. Not really. She laughs out loud and hides it behind a fist. She gets caught up in the adventure and her eyes go wide at the harrowing parts, even though she's seen it before.

She must have seen it before. She was crying even before the sad parts and she mouths Russell's lines once in a while.

She loves Dug. Who wouldn't? But she really loves him. She laughs and there's this soft, fond look he didn't really know she had and she saves it mostly for Dug. That makes him less lonely, too. He does a mean Dug impression.

She laughs and loves the happy ending, but she hides it behind a frayed, worn out sleeve. And all the while, the tears come steadily.

He knows the feeling.

* * *

He doesn't expect it. No one ever stays through the credits. No one.

He's used to everyone ruining that. Rushing out and chattering and blocking his view. But they stay. They like to see the cast list. To see how we'll they've guessed who's who and talk about where they've seem them before. They like the music credits. Finding out what that song was and who covered what. He likes it, anyway. He likes the credits and Alexis will sit through them for the right bribe. _Would._

The feeling is settling in again. That nothing feeling, but not so bad. Not yet.

Because no one else stays for the credits, but Beckett hasn't moved. The theater is all but empty now, and she hasn't moved.

At first he thinks she just needs a minute. That she's been crying and she just needs a minute. But he steals a glance her way, and she's watching. Her head tips up to catch the text as it scrolls by.

She's watching and she doesn't need a minute. She's even hot when she cries. She's been crying for two hours and the light of the screen touches her cheeks with a faint blue and she's gorgeous.

The copyright notice rolls and he has a sudden, blind panic. It finally occurs to him that he's sitting behind her. That she'll have to walk past him. That she'll see him.

A little something angry bubbles up. So what if she sees him? It's a public place. He was here first and so what if she sees him?

He crosses his arms over his chest and slams back into the seat, but it's all bluster. That nothing feeling is creeping back in and worrying at him and he can't bear the thought of her looking right through him.

So he'll go to her. What else can he do? He'll say hello, and maybe she'll yell or maybe she'll ignore him. Maybe she'll still look right through him, but she'll have to see him first. For that first moment, she'll have to see him.

He's just about to do it. He's gathering himself up and thinking what he'll say. What he'll do if she brushes by him without a word.

He's just about to go to her when he realizes that the lights are half up and she's still in her seat. She's not curled up anymore. She's pitched forward with her feet flat on the floor and her head bowed.

There's sadness in every line of her body and he thinks this was a bad idea for her, too. This movie. He thinks maybe she came to get out of her head for a while and this movie was a bad idea. Her shoulders hitch once and still.

He feels like he's intruding. He _is _intruding. She wouldn't want anyone to see her like this.

Even if it's a public place. Even if he was there first. Even if it's been twenty-four days and he doesn't know how he's going to back to not seeing her. He doesn't know how he's going to go back to doing nothing. But he's intruding.

He stays a moment longer. Just a moment and she's still. She's absolutely still.

He slips out the far side of the aisle and goes.

* * *

He's not quite running by the time he hits the street, but it's close. He's putting distance between himself and the theater. He still has this crazy idea about going to her. Asking her if she wants to talk about it.

Then he thinks he'll go to her and make her talk about it. That he'll tell her how _stupid _it is to ignore what he found out about her mother because she's mad at him and he wasn't trying to hurt her.

Then he thinks he'll go to her and tell her that she's ruined his life. That he doesn't want this feeling he can't shake. He wants to write and live his life and not feel like he's doing nothing and she ruined _everything_.

He thinks a bunch of stupid things and takes long strides and puts distance between himself and the theater.

He's most of the way past the storefront when he pulls up short. He lingers at the window and feels the dangerous sting of tears, which is fairly ridiculous. The display is a riot of color. It's Dug and Russell practically dancing with excitement. It's Kevin's long legs and one wide eye dipping down behind Carl who is oblivious to the whole thing. It's a sweet, funny moment and he feels the sting of tears.

He's about to move on. He's about to find some place decently isolated. Some place to pull himself together. But he reverses course. He retraces his steps and he's pushing his way into the store.

Something else struggles up and pushes the tears back and he supposes that's good. It's stubborn and pissed off and whatever. It's better than tears. It's better than nothing.

At first he's just brushing through the crowded aisles. His hands are in his pockets and he's not really looking. He's just trying not to make eye contact or step on any kids.

He finds himself in the costume section. He's flicking through the hangers absently when he realizes he should get something for Alexis. She's embarrassed? He'll show her embarrassed.

The knot in his chest loosens a little. He's plotting and that always makes him feel better. He studies the Wilderness Explorer costume and grumbles to himself, not for the first time, about age discrimination. They only have it for little kids and what's _that _about?

He makes his way to the end cap and there's a collection of pins. He crouches. Scans the rows and grabs a handful. Ellie's bottle cap pin and a few of Russell's badges. Kevin drinking a milkshake. He grins to himself and plots out where he'll pin them. How he'll hide them in plain sight on her backpack and jackets and she'll be finding them for weeks and she'll glare. But she'll pin them on the old hair ribbons hanging on her mirror anyway and he'll keep putting them back.

He grabs a keychain and wishes there were _something_ in the way of costumes for bigger kids. For grown ups.

_Shit._ She's a grown up, isn't she? Alexis is a grown up.

He stuffs the thought down and keeps hunting for something. _Something._ Russell's sash or the hat. _Oooh_ he wonders if they have Muntz's goggles. And Ellie's for Alexis. Father–daughter goggles would be _awesome _and he's totally prepared to guilt her into that.

He wanders, but the costume section ends and it's all plush now. He picks up a "Baby Kevin." He zips and unzips the egg and pulls out the gangly legs. He tucks that under his arm._ Baby bird._ She may be a grown up, but she's still baby bird.

None of the Carls or Russells is very good, but the Dugs are great. He loves all the Dugs and he could get into trouble here. He walks the aisle carefully and comes to the end. A bunch of them _talk._ Of course they talk and he might be in _real_ trouble here. He might have to call a car.

He tries to keep it together. He tells himself he's going to be sensible. He makes the rounds, pressing buttons and squeezing paws and listening to the dialogue. He laughs. They all make him laugh and he realizes he's exhausted. He's worn out from the movie and crying and seeing Beckett and he's slightly hysterical.

He looks down at himself. His arms are full and the pins keep threatening to spill out of his hand and he wonders what he's even doing here. There's a mostly empty shelf at his elbow and he's just about to dump everything on to it. He's just about to walk out and find somewhere to get a drink.

But there's one more Dug. The only one of its kind on the shelf and his ears are pricked up and his tongue is lolling out and it's his happy dog face and he knows that's the one. He reaches out and squeezes the plush paw and the doofy voice rushes out:

_I just met you. And I _love _you._

He stands there staring for a minute. More than a minute. Something nearly knocks him over. He looks down and it's a little girl diving for a different plush on the bottom shelf. her mother is hot on her heels and she looks up him with a harried, apologetic smile.

He says something polite and clutches his loot. He turns and then he's at the register. He's out the door and the bags are bumping his knees. He's home and he should be laying out his master plan for ambushing Alexis, but he's not.

He's sitting on the bed with a stuffed dog in his lap, squeezing its paw over and over.

_I just met you. And I _love _you._

* * *

_2013 _

She doesn't believe in the therapeutic value of a good cry. He wishes she did.

Because she's sad lately. She denies it, but he can tell. He sees the work it takes to keep her shoulders straight and the sharp edge to her voice when something gets to her. Him. A case. The city. She's sad and she's fighting the inclination to bow under the weight.

She's sad tonight. He can tell by the way she orders one more drink than she usually would. It's the six of them out for a quieter celebration of Jenny and Kevin's anniversary. They had the big party—giant, actually—on the day and Jenny wanted something just for their little family.

_Family_.

It keeps coming up. It's how Jenny is anyway, and now she has babies on the brain, and it keeps coming up. She means well. They all mean well, but it's hard on Kate. It's bad timing. The coincidence of dates.

He stops himself a drink shy of his usual and she gives him a sharp look. A sharp look with an effort that says she doesn't need him taking care of her. But he just shrugs and lays his hand over her thigh to say it's not like that.

And it's not. It's not about her. He's just feeling a little soft already and he doesn't need an assist from the alcohol. He's not sad, but there's something about winter that makes him need this. That makes him want to lay in supplies and gather around a table with people he loves and it means a lot to him. The six of them like this. It means a lot and it makes him a little teary.

And he believes in the therapeutic value of a good cry, just not around cops. Not around _most _cops. He grins to himself and dips his head to brush a kiss over her temple. Esposito makes exaggerated retching noises and Ryan consoles him. Jenny scolds and Lanie laughs.

Kate looks up at him. She means it to be sharp. Something for show, but she doesn't quite get there. She's sad and it just comes out shaky. Forlorn on anyone who wasn't Kate Beckett.

"Do you want to go?" he says in a low voice and it's a dirty move. She won't be happy about it, but he doesn't care right now.

She makes it this time. This time it _is_ a sharp look, but he doesn't flinch. It was a dirty move and he knew he'd pay.

It doesn't last. The sharpness doesn't last and she gives him a small nod.

He makes a show of it. He yawns and says he was up late . . . _writing _. . .and he trades barbs with Esposito and Ryan. Lanie's watching him like she knows what's going on though and she gives him an approving nod. Jenny catches him around the waist and he bear hugs her back, bearing the brunt of her effusive attention.

Kate squeezes Jenny's shoulder and retreats a few steps, shooting him a grateful look.

She's sad and this is how it takes her. She withdraws. Even after all the work she's done—the work he knows she's still doing—this is still how it takes her.

He's half afraid she'll want to go home alone and he steels himself for it. For a smile she hopes will do and a good night kiss and two cabs.

But she hooks her arm through his and says thank you so quietly he almost doesn't hear it. She tucks her chin against her chest and her shoulders droop.

He hails a cab and takes her home.

* * *

It's early yet. Kind of. They hit the Old Haunt right after work and it's that in-between time. Too late for dinner and too early for bed.

"Anything you want to do?" he asks.

He turns to help her with her coat and blinks at the tension in her spine.

"Castle, don't manage me," she snaps. She steps away and takes the coat off herself.

"Sorry," he mumbles. "I wasn't . . . I didn't mean to."

She deflates immediately. They stand there in the hallway not looking at each other.

"No, I'm sorry," she sighs. "I know . . . I'm just . . ."

"Sad?" It's probably stupid. He'll probably pay for it. But he doesn't see the point. He doesn't see the point of _not_ saying it.

"I'm not . . ." It's immediate, but she trails off just as quickly. She looks up at him and her eyes are suspiciously bright.

He reaches for her and he'll probably pay for that, too, but she's _sad_ and it's ok. It's _normal_ and he can't just stand there and pretend that she's not or she shouldn't be.

She's limp against him. She hooks her thumbs through his belt loops like she doesn't have the energy to hold on herself, so he holds on for both of them. He expects her to push him away. To complain that he's crushing her, but she's just limp against him.

They're quiet a long while and he feels her drawing herself up. He feels her calling up the sharpness and trying to stand straight and he probably can't stop her. He probably can't convince her that it's ok, but there's already a long list of things he's going to pay for, so what's one more?

"It's not a girl thing, Beckett," he says. She moves to look up at him, but he threads his hand into her hair and kisses the top of her head. "Having a good cry is not a girl thing."

She laughs. It's small, but it's a laugh and she presses her face into his chest.

"Oh, I know, Castle," she says drily. "Believe me, I know it's not a 'girl thing'."

"A catharsis of pity and fear. Aristotle. Not a girl thing." He kisses her hair again and steps back a little. "I'm just saying."

She gives him a small smile and it's sad. She lets it be sad and it feels strangely like a win.

"Can we. . . . " She pauses. She worries her lip with her teeth. "How about a movie?"

That feels like a win, too.

* * *

He tells her to pick while he changes . She shoots him a look over her shoulder like she knows he's up to something, but she doesn't push it.

It takes him some digging around to find him. _Stratigraphy,_ he thinks, and strokes his hand over the plush ears. It's been a long time. A long time and he still feels a pang when he thinks about it. Even now it hurts to think about those long months and that feeling of nothing.

But it's no match for the Dug's wide smile and lolling tongue and he has to stop himself from making him talk. He roots around and finds a stray Christmas bow in one of the bins he hasn't found time to take back down to storage. He sets the bow at a jaunty angle and stands the little dog carefully on her pillow.

She's still rooting around on the shelf when he comes out. She turns around and he sees the DVD in her hand. He's shocked still and not surprised at all. Both at once.

He grins at her. "I'll get the Kleenex."

She rolls her eyes at him, but nods. "Probably best. Because it's not a girl thing."

* * *

She won't let him put Milk Duds in the popcorn, but nobody's perfect. She's just close. Really, really close.

"Where would you even _get _them?" she asks as she dumps the popcorn into a bowl.

"Jorge will deliver for the right price," he says and manages snag a few pieces before she slaps his hand away. "Real butter at least?"

"Fine." She sighs like it's a great sacrifice, but it's one of her vices and they both know that.

He settles himself on one end of the couch. He's surprised when she drops right next to him—right next to him—and tries not to show it. When she burrows under his arm and right up against his side, though, he has to kiss her and he almost ruins it.

She sits up straight and shies away and he's about to beg her not to when she stops herself. She stops herself and pulls his arm around her.

"Play," she murmurs.

* * *

She cries. So does he, but that's kind of a given.

And it's not like it was then. It's not like four years ago when she made herself small and the tears kept coming.

She cries for Ellie and Carl. She flinches once. The first time his thumb intercepts the path of a tear, she flinches. But he's not looking at her. He's very carefully not looking at her and she just presses her lips to his chest and takes a deep breath. She reaches up with her own thumb and gathers the moisture at the corner of his eye. He smiles down at her and nudges her attention back to the screen.

She cries. Longer and harder than she's ever let him see. He strokes his hand down her arm and over her back and she lets him.

The tears slow and then stop and her body is heavy against his and it's different. She laughs, too, and it's more than a little worn out. She pushes up against his arm, but it's just so she can stretch out with her head in his lap.

She laughs and sighs and gasps, but her eyelids are drooping. They flutter closed and he's not sure what to do. His hand hovers over her shoulder and he wonders if he should wake her.

"I'm not sleeping, Castle." She says it before he has a chance to decide.

"Not watching, either," he says with a soft laugh. "We can go to bed."

She shakes her head and cracks one eye open. Her hair spills over his thigh and that suddenly seems like a _very _good idea, even though she's obviously exhausted. "Gotta make sure Dug's ok."

He thinks about arguing, but she's right. She doesn't need him managing her. He nods and tips her chin back toward the TV.

* * *

She tries to clean up. She has this thing. Like she's a guest here. He snags the popcorn bowl from her and shoos her toward the bedroom.

She doesn't argue and it might just be that she's tired, but he hopes not. He hopes not.

He trails through the loft, turning off lights and putting things away. He hears her laughing. All the way from the kitchen he hears her laughing and he hurries for the bedroom.

She's cross-legged on the bed and grinning. She's tired and pale and her shoulders dip in, but she's grinning, too.

She sees him in the doorway and the grin widens. She arches an eyebrow and squeezes the plush paw.

_Will you be my master? _

Her head falls back and she laughs again. He crosses the bedroom in two steps and clambers on to the bed. He stretches out next to her and she threads her fingers in his hair.

"Castle, I thought you'd never ask." She smiles down at him.

"Please," he scoffs. "I was asking for four years."

"True," she agrees and presses the red patch again.

_I can bark._ Dug demonstrates and adds, _And here's howling._ _Awoooooooo!_

He tips his own head back and howls along.

She presses her fingers over his mouth and he kisses them.

"I'm surprised it still works after all the abuse you must have put him through."

"I didn't," he says hesitantly. "I haven't . . . not since I bought him."

She looks surprised and her face falls a little. He looks up at her. He's not sure he gets it. She knows. Since Christmas she's known about them. All the gifts. He's not sure he gets it, but he makes a sudden decision.

"I was there," he says quickly. Before he can change his mind. "When you saw it in the theater. Not the first time, I don't think. You . . . you cried like you knew it was going to be sad. I was there."

It suddenly feels like a confession, and he wasn't thinking of it that way, but he supposes it is. A confession. An overdue apology. It just feels like something he needed to say.

"I know." She seems him panic. She dips her head to press her lips to his forehead. "Don't I always know when you're being creepy?"

He huffs out a laugh, but it hurts a little and he has to know. "The whole time? You knew the whole time?"

She shakes her head. "No. Maybe . . . halfway through? There was this loud—_really_ loud—kind of strangled, honking and the whole theater turned to look at you."

He gives her an exaggerated pout. "It was a manly sob. Some of us believe in the therapeutic value of a good cry."

She gives him a tired smile. "You may be on to something, Castle."

She expects him to crow. She's bracing for it, but he reaches up and traces a fingertip over her tearstained cheek.

"Maybe," he says softly. He reaches over and presses the little golden paw again.

_I just met you. And I _love _you._


	11. Picture Book, 1 x 07, 2 x 14, 3 x 12

Title: Picture Book

WC: ~7200

Summary: "Because it's a great picture. Because he remembers that _thank you_ every time he looks at it. Because he can hear her voice and feel her arm through his and the hills and valleys of her spine under his palm when they danced. Because he has a lot of pictures of her, but only one of them."

Spoilers: 1 x 07 (Home is Where the Heart Stops), 2 x 14 (The Third Man), 3 x 12 (Poof! You're Dead)

A/N: This totally jumped the queue. I had the second chapter of Bodies at Rest going and there's another chapter of this that I started even before Up and Away, but the brain wants what it wants.

Berkie Lynn, as you know, is diabolical. This one is for dtrekker who may be happy that I've written it or annoyed that I'm still writing this story. I am unsure which.

* * *

Picture book, of people with each other, to prove they love each other a long time ago.

- The Kinks

* * *

_2009_

He has a lot of pictures of her. She looks annoyed in most of them.

She's in the background and he knows she's annoyed because she's glaring over her shoulder or she moves at the last second to _make_ herself part of the background, and her body is all hard, intersecting lines. He knows she's annoyed because she has her hand blocking half her face like she was just sweeping her hair behind her ear and it's 100% calculated.

He knows she's annoyed because he's the one taking the picture.

It took him a long time to get the one he uses for his phone. Not that he hadn't seen that look a hundred times before he managed to capture it. Ok, maybe not a hundred. A dozen. At least a dozen at that point.

But she has an uncanny knack for sensing the camera and packing that look away. Twisting her mouth and turning her face so that the shadows are harsh and severe. And she's still gorgeous. She's always gorgeous.

But he was proud of that one. He was proud of capturing that soft look, even if she was talking to Ryan and he caught her unawares. Even if she twisted his ear and tried to wrestle his phone away from him. Even if she _did_ wrestle his phone away, but not until he'd emailed it to himself. Even if she twisted his ear again a few weeks later when she saw it pop up when he was texting her something else. He's proud of that one.

He has a lot of pictures of her, but only one of _them _and it cost him. Not just money. Well, money, too. Quite a bit of money, because apparently that photographer was someone. Even though he was covering a second-rate fundraiser red carpet that night, he was someone.

So it cost him. A donation hefty enough to stop the tide of comments about fair use and the fact that Beckett's build makes it a perfect picture for the cover their mailings and that is _definitely_ not happening. So it costs him money and a lifetime of junk mail and phone calls from the dance theater trying to get more money. But it cost him pride, more importantly. Pride and hassle. Paula has yet to shut up about it.

She's yet to shut up about it, and she's not wrong. It's a great picture and he sort of hates himself for burying it. He hates Beckett for making him into someone who would bury it. Who'd even think of it, let alone pay money and incur the wrath of his agent to do it.

But she was so . . . gracious about the whole thing. About the dress and the limo and being on his arm. About his mother and her over-the-top gesture with the jewelry.

He expected her to . . . he doesn't really know. To show up at his door in something defiantly off the rack and throw the dress in his face? To set it on fire and him with it? He expected yelling at least. He didn't expect it. A quiet, sincere thank you. For the compliment and the dress. He didn't expect her to blush and lift her hair while his mother fastened the necklace for her. He didn't expect this new version of her. _Her. _

She was gracious and she didn't have to be.

And he makes her life difficult. He knows that. And it's fun. It's fun when it's just him bugging her. When he's swiping files and working his way out of cuffs and snapping pictures that make her blush and twist his ear.

When she lets a little something slip and he grabs out his pen and notebook and scribbles furiously and she wants to know. She wants to _know_ what he's writing. What he thinks he knows about her. She wants to know and she won't ask and it drives her crazy.

When he free associates about a case. When he lets things unfold like a plot in his mind and he's talking out loud and he hits on it. He tugs on the loose thread and he's _right_. When he gets them to a place that would have taken them ages her way. When she gets swept up in it and starts telling stories right along with him.

That's fun. Making her life difficult like that? Yeah, that's fun.

But he wouldn't . . . he didn't realize at first that he _really_ makes her life difficult, and he feels like an ass. When he lets his guard down, anyway. When he's not feeling defensive about his right to be there, he feels like an ass. When it's staring him in the face. Snide comments and significant looks. Conversation that grinds to a halt when she walks into a room with him on her heels. He _really_ makes her life difficult.

And she already takes so much shit. For being young. For being a woman. For being ridiculously beautiful and, he suspects, better than pretty much anyone else in recent memory at her job.

She already takes so much shit, and she was gracious. So he weathered Paula's wrath and told her to take care of it. To talk to the event managers and make sure none of the others showed up anywhere. And to buy that one. The one that would have showed up all over the place if he hadn't.

The one he wanted anyway. Because it's a great picture. Because he remembers that _thank you_ every time he looks at it. Because he can hear her voice and feel her arm through his and the hills and valleys of her spine under his palm when they danced.

Because he has a lot of pictures of her, but only one of them.

* * *

_2010_

He thinks about letting this one go. He could. There's no way he could have known there'd be someone with a camera. He's still not even sure where the guy was lurking, and he's already had words with Frankie about it.

He could let it go entirely or even ask Paula to control the spin. Let it show up a few places.

He thinks about that. Mostly because Paula still hasn't shut up about the first one. It's been almost a year and she still hasn't shut up about it. And she's still not wrong. It's good publicity. It _would be_ good publicity.

Author and muse, romantically linked. It would be great for sales. Great for the movie deal and they're so close with that. It could be the thing that pushes the studio over the edge.

And despite all his bluster, it would be good for his "reputation," too. Because there is nothing so attractive to a certain kind of woman as the promise of a cat fight, and Paula has been all over his case about dropping off page six.

She wants to know what he does with his time, since he's not writing. It's apparently time to have "the talk" with his mother again about talking to Gina. He's writing. Just . . . _slowly. _And he's working, though neither Gina nor Paula see it that way. He's working a lot. Just mostly not at writing.

So he could let it go. Nothing would shut Paula up like a few days of fielding calls and hopping from drinks to drinks to drinks, insisting with a broad wink that she can neither confirm or deny.

One picture and a few veiled hints. It would make his life easier in so many ways.

But none of that is why he wants to let this one go. Every single one of those things is true, and none of them has a anything at all to do with why he wants to let that picture hit page six.

She twirled her hair. Beckett—_Beckett_—twirled her hair. And his name was Brad and whose name is _Brad_ this side of a soap opera canvas?

And it's not like he's worried. Hair twirling or not, he's not worried about Brad.

Because she showed up at Drago. Actually, _he_ showed up at Drago, but come on . . . which one of them was the dark horse for showing up at Drago, no matter _who_ brought it up first?

He wants to make something of the fact that she showed up there. She's the one who was making the arrangements and she could have gone anywhere. But she showed up _there._ With Brad.

He wants to tell himself that she had a hunch. That she suspected he'd go there, or maybe she was even hoping. Maybe she was just as . . . just as whatever about Bachelorette Number Three as he was over Mr. July. As he was over the hair twirling.

He wants to make something of that and he can't help thinking that a year ago he would've gotten away with it. That before he met her, he'd have told himself it was a clear sign that she was interested. That she was keeping tabs on him and standing by to sabotage his date. He'd have told himself that and let himself get away with it.

It's another thing he could hate her for. This ruthless honesty, even with himself.

But she was on a date and _he's_ the one who showed up. He's the one who was . . . whatever. Curious. _Concerned._ For her. Because, really? A hook up by way of Lanie? Like _that's_ a good idea?

But he can't get away with that either. Apparently he's not the kind of person who can let himself get away with that. Not anymore. And, yes, he would definitely like to hate her for all this annoying personal growth.

Curious? Sure. Yes. He's curious. She's his subject. His muse. And he wants to know how she'd be on a first date. On any date. He wants to know how she'd be with Rook.

He wants to know what she's like off the clock.

He wants to know what it's like to be out with her. _Really_ out with her.

Yes, he's curious. He's curious. But worried is a better word. Jealous is better still. And he wants to hate her for that, too.

Because he's clinging to things he shouldn't have even noticed. That he shouldn't care about at all. Like the fact that she left him more than once. She left _Brad_. For work, sure. But work means _him,_ and she thinks so too. She was expecting him. Even the first time, and she had that impatient _catch up, Castle _look on her face. And the second time, she just held up her phone without a second thought so they both could talk to the boys.

He's clinging to all that and it doesn't even make sense. Because she walked out on Brad. She walked out with _him. _Brad is nothing. Nothing to be jealous of. But he's still clinging to all that. He's still assembling a case for why he's not worried.

And he's not. He's not worried about Brad. Not _this _Brad. He's worried about future Brads. He's worried that the stupid _Ledger _blurb has her running. That she's on a quest for future Brads now because she doesn't want him getting ideas. She doesn't want anyone getting ideas.

That's what he's worried about. That's why he wants to let this one go. That's why he wants it out there for all of New York to see.

It's a great picture, too. A tight close up and she's in red again. She's beautiful in red, though she hardly ever wears it. And her hair is swept back and up. Playful and severe at the same time, with nothing on her neck to really soften it. Just tiny earrings and the bare expanse of one shoulder.

It's a great picture. Better because they're the only two who know what the smile she's giving him is about. She's turning to him. She's leaning in, and the light catches the exact moment when she sees where he's going with his impromptu lecture on snakes. Anyone else would think that smile is about something else entirely.

_He's _starting to think it's about something else entirely. He's starting to hope it is, and he wants to let this one go. He wants to eliminate the possibility of future Brads. He wants to tell her that it's too late. That he already has ideas. He already has lots of ideas about the two of them.

He wants to let this one go. But he won't.

Because what if it does the opposite? What if the men of New York suddenly sit up and take notice? What if she's surrounded by Brads just waiting to take her away from him?

Not that they could. Not that that they would be. Because she's not his to take away and he hates this line of reasoning in all kinds of ways because it has him back to wanting to let it go.

But he won't. Because he wouldn't do that to her. He's not the kind of person who would do that to her, not matter how much easier it would make his life. Maybe he was a year ago, but he's not now.

He won't. Because it would make her life difficult and he already does that. He makes her life difficult and she wants him around anyway. She said that. She wants him around.

He won't because he wants it for himself. Because he has a lot of pictures of her and only two of them.

* * *

_2011_

It's the first picture she lets him take of the two of them.

He has a lot of pictures of them. By then, anyway. By then, he has a lot of pictures with both of them in it. Team shots and the two of them crowded in with half a dozen other people. Corroboration for precinct dares. Back-and-forth insults with Robbery and other divisions.

There's this stuffed mascot thing they kidnap and ransom. Back and forth and compromising pictures are a big part of it. And she rolls her eyes but comes when Ryan waves her over. She lets him pull her by the elbow into the corner of the frame.

He even has a few of just the two of them. Esposito and Ryan went through a phase where they were obsessed with snapping pictures of the two of them working. All odd angles and funny faces and unflattering light. Unflattering to him. Nothing seems to be unflattering to her. Nothing.

He has a lot of pictures of them, but this is the first one she lets him take.

"Lets" is stretching it. She suffers it. Because she feels sorry for him. Because she's being nice.

She's being nice and he pushes it. He says a woman has never given him flowers before and she calls him a liar. He owns the lie, but insists _she's_ never given him flowers before and he needs to record it for posterity.

She blushes and says they're not real. Just silk flowers, but she's blushing and he pushes it some more, even though he knows she's just being nice. Even though he knows it makes him some kind of newly discovered lower life form. Because his last words to Gina are still buzzing in his mouth and that's why she's being nice. It's the only reason she invited him along tonight, and he's pushing it.

He can't help himself. He can't.

It wasn't a realization. It's too late to call it that. It's been too late for a long time. It was—it _is—_just . . . clarity. Sudden clarity with her close enough to kiss and the air crackling between them. The case, yes. The solve, but more. There's always more than just that between them and he believes her.

Cynical and hurting—and he _is _hurting, even though it was well past time he ended things with Gina, he's hurting—he still believes her. He believes the bubble won't burst when he's in it with the right person.

He believes her and it's too late to call it a realization and he can't help himself. He pushes it.

She offers to take a picture of _him_ with the flowers and he pouts into his hot chocolate. She rolls her eyes and says fine and he doesn't hesitate. He doesn't miss a beat because she might change her mind. He tugs her into the circle of streetlight and she's frowning. An overblown thing that really means that she's trying not to laugh. That she's counting off a decent interval until she gives in.

She looks up at him and he wonders for the hundredth time in the last three hours or so how much longer he can go without kissing her. How much longer he can go without telling her that he loves her and Gina was a mistake. How much longer he can go without knowing the whens and whys and wherefores of her break-up with Demming. Without knowing the worst of it. How much time they've wasted.

He wonders how much longer he go without telling her that Josh is a mistake, too. He's a mistake and this—_this_—is the right bubble. Right here in this circle of streetlight with silk flowers and hot chocolate on both their tongues. This is the right bubble.

He shoves the flowers into her hand. It's a defense tactic, but he undermines it right away. He slips an arm around her before she can object. He leans in and presses his cheek to hers before she can object to that, either. He stretches his other arm way out and taps the button with his thumb and he catches it.

By some miracle he catches the moment between them. This moment they keep stepping into over and over again. So long and so often that it's too late to call it realization.

He catches it. Her eyes are on him. Three quarters to the camera, but really looking at him with a question and a soft, serious almost-smile on her lips. He catches it and then she's ducking away. She's blushing and she's a little less nice and he's almost sorry. He's almost sorry he pushed it.

But the picture fills the screen as he pockets the phone and he can't quite make it there. He can't quite make it all the way to sorry.

It's the first picture she lets him take of the two of them.

* * *

_2012_

Kate shoves him out of bed. Literally shoves him. Literally out of bed. He's on his knees peering reproachfully over the edge.

"Go," she says. She stretches her arms overhead and settles back against the pillows. "Shower, Castle. You have a date."

"No date," he says darkly. "Raincheck."

He clambers back on to the bed and grabs her wrists. He pins them to the bed and stretches out over her. He leans in to kiss her and she plays along. She kisses him back and he's completely unprepared for it. For the sudden twist of her wrists and her calf snaking around his. For the fact that now _he's_ the one on his back. For the fact that she's staring down at him with her scary face.

"No raincheck," she says as she throws her leg over him and straddles his waist.

Scary face or no, he grins up at her. Because she's straddling his waist, and does she really think _that's_ a good strategy? Talk about mixed messages. He grins and shifts his hips to make his point and _Oh _. . . that's her _really _scary face.

"No. Raincheck." She's in his face and it's not an invitation. It's mostly not an invitation. He strains up and his teeth nip at her jaw, but she pulls away. She ignores him. "It's her first Christmas since she left for college. It's _our _ . . ."

Her breath hitches and the scary face flickers and he remembers. He remembers that this is new for her. That she's taking a huge step for him. With him. He remembers that this is more complicated than he wants it to be.

"It's our first Christmas together," he says quietly and he feels the blush sweep through her. He presses his shoulders up from the bed and kisses her softly. He settles back to the bed. He tips his head to the side and considers her. "She's ok with that, you know. Alexis isn't . . . it wasn't about you. When I told her . . ."

"I know," she says, but her eyes flick away just for a second. She knows but she doesn't _know. _"I know, Castle, but I don't want . . ." She pulls her lip between her teeth and looks away again. "How long have you been doing this? How many years?"

His face falls. He sighs and wriggles his hands. She lets his wrists go. He snags her fingers and brings them to his mouth.

"A long time," he admits. "Since she was six."

She knows the story. The first Christmas Meredith let Alexis down. She was supposed to come for a week. And then it was five days and then three days and then a call at 10 AM on Christmas Day. An hour before her plane was supposed to land, saying she wasn't coming at all. And then it was him going overboard, trying to make up for it. A three-day extravaganza of shopping and movies and eating themselves sick.

And this is all that's left of it. The ritual they still keep after all these years. Boxing Day morning they troll Macy's and Bloomingdale's for decorations. Ornaments and lights and table linens. And then they get a big table at the Russian Tea Room and map out their battle plan for next Christmas.

Kate knows the story. It's one of a dozen he's bombarded her with over the last few weeks. More than a dozen stories he's been rambling on about. Rambling on and completely missing the way he was running roughshod over her. The way he still is, because she's taking a step, but it's complicated.

He drops her fingers and slides his hands up her thighs. She gives him a warning look, but he's being good. "Sorry, Beckett. I've got a date."

She give shim a small smile and leans down to kiss him. His fingertips slide beneath the hem of her shorts. He's being _mostly _good.

"_Castle,_" she huffs, but her heart's not entirely in it. "Date. You have a date."

"Date," he murmurs as he slides his palms around her thighs. "Date later. Shower first."

* * *

"It's nice." Alexis's chin lands on his shoulder.

He startles and almost drops it. She caught him dead to rights. He has no idea how long he's been standing there staring at it. He sets it down gently and turns to her. She has a basket over her arm and it's filled nearly to the brim. It's been a while.

"Hey!" he says brightly. He snags the edge of her basket and peers inside. "Good stuff?"

She ignores him. She tugs the basket away and reaches past him for it. "Why'd you put it back? It's pretty!"

She holds it up to the light. A perfect sphere. Crystal etched with a scattering of delicate circles. They catch the light and refract it, the faintest rainbow sheen curving over the surface. It looks for all the world like a bubble. A perfect bubble twirling on the end of a crimson velvet ribbon.

Something about it catches her attention and she sets it carefully on her palm. She studies the top and her fingernail finds the seam. She frowns and steps past him. She searches through the boxes scattered on the table and comes up with the right one.

"Oh, Dad, look! It holds pictures!" She turns the box over. "Not pictures. You send them pictures and they put them on celluloid. Like film cells. So the light comes through."

"Yeah," he says quietly and tries to draw her away. Because today is about her. About them.

But she just grins at him and sets the box in her basket. "She'll love it."

"She?" It's lame. It's pathetic and he doesn't blame her a bit when she rolls her eyes.

"She'll love it," she repeats, but then she goes a little quieter. She presses her lips together the way she always does when she's being the grown up. When she's telling him something she knows he won't want to hear. "But, Dad?"

He waits. He looks from the ornament to her and he waits.

"Next year, ok?" she says softly. "She needs a little time. But next year she'll love it."

His face falls a little. He can't help it. It's . . . he just loves when something like this falls into his lap and he loves giving her presents and he's only just gotten the chance to do it lately. He was thinking Valentine's Day, maybe. Or maybe as soon as it comes back. As soon as he gets it back. Three pictures of them and the right bubble.

As soon as he gets it back he figured they could start planning for next Christmas. Maybe she'll have a tree at her place. Maybe there won't be a her place. Maybe it'll just be _their _place and he assumes that'll be the loft, but maybe not . . .

His mind runs quite a ways away with him and he lands hard. He lands hard and Alexis has a hand on his shoulder and it's heavy with stern pity.

She's right. It's too soon and this is still complicated. And he knows—he _knows_—there'll be a next Christmas. And Alexis knows, too, and that's important. That's important to him.

Kate knows. He thinks about her on his doorstep. Kissing her by the tree. Waking up with her Christmas morning. She knows there'll be next Christmas and the Christmas after that. And someday there _will _be a their place. But it's complicated. For now, it's complicated.

"Next year." He nods and slides an arm around Alexis's shoulders. He kisses the top of her head and steers them toward the registers. "Next year."

* * *

_2013_

They compromise. It's December first and the loft feels naked, but this was their compromise and that's all about to change. He was teasing about the day after Halloween. He was _mostly_ teasing. Because he's excited and he would have started the day after Halloween if she'd let him.

It was a mistake letting on about that. It was a mistake waking her up with a little Burl Ives on November first. He lost some ground there and _yes, _it's only been three days since Thanksgiving, but it's been three days of agony. And Thanksgiving night is practically traditional. It's the real start of the Christmas season. Totally normal people decorate on Thanksgiving night.

But he lost that ground and it's been agony. Three days of agony, but so worth it. Agony is a small price to pay for the memory of dancing a very sleepy Kate around the bedroom to "Holly, Jolly Christmas." A small price to pay for the day-long, mostly naked argument about when they _could _start decorating if the first was to early and the second was too early and the third . . .

Agony, but worth it and she'll be here soon. The fire is lit and there's wine breathing and the bins of decorations are piled high in the corner.

He thinks about pouring himself a glass of wine or something stronger. Something to take the edge off his excitement, because she'll be here soon, but it's still not easy for her.

A year later, it's still an effort and they've talked about it. They've talked about how they can meet in the middle. New traditions and old ones. Both together, and he knows this is big for her. He knows it's an effort, but he's _excited. _

He's been dashing around the loft doing everything one handed because the box is in his other hand. He can't make up his mind. He doesn't know if it should be the first thing or the last.

First, he thinks. Because his mother and Alexis won't be there until later and maybe it should be just between them. Maybe that's how the moment should be.

But they were all there last year. When he gave her the first one. For the first gift, they were all there, and he likes the idea of that being a tradition. Of their moments and family moments being the same thing. So last then. Maybe last.

He can't decide and the clock decides for him. Because he's standing in the middle of the loft with the dark blue box in his hand and there's her key in the door and that still gives him a thrill. This is still his place and she still has hers, but she has a key and she uses it. He covers the distance to the door in a few quick strides

She's not expecting it. She's startled when the door gives way too soon. She stumbles a little and she thought she had a little more time. He sees it. She thought she had an extra moment to set her shoulders and fix a smile on her face and he sees it.

He sees it and she knows. She knows and she's angry with herself and sorry.

He sets the box down absently and tugs her inside. He kisses her, first thing. He curves his palms around her freezing cheeks and kisses her.

"We don't have to," he whispers. He pulls back a fraction of an inch and smiles. "We don't have to do this now."

She smiles back. It's a little weary. All of her is a little weary, but the smile is lopsided and real. She lets her head drop against his shoulder and wraps her arms tight around his waist.

It's a silent thank you and he tamps down the disappointment. He tells himself they'll do this eventually. A few days. Next Christmas. That she's here and that's what really matters and they'll do this eventually.

She kisses the underside of his jaw and steps back. He lets her go and runs a hand through his hair. He's wracking his brain for what they do now. He looks to the tower of bins in the corner of room and supposes they ought to go out. Because it's silly and too much and the last thing he wants to do is build up bad associations for her here.

He turns to her and wills a suggestion to come. Something. Anything. He turns to her and stops.

She stops, too. She has her coat half off and she stops. "What?"

"You're short," he blurts. He looks down and sees she's already kicked off her heels. She's kicked them off and added them to the jumble by the hall closet that they bicker about. He grumbles and they bicker because it's the only thing that keeps him from bouncing up and down with a ridiculous grin every time he thinks about how many of her shoes live here now.

She gives him a quizzical look. "Are you ok?"

"I . . ." He lunges toward her and helps her the rest of the way off with her coat. He roots around in the closet for a hanger. He stalls for time. "You're staying? We're staying?"

She blushes. She's embarrassed and he wants to rewind the last five minutes of his life. But she looks up at him then, and it's not such a big deal. "I'm just a little tired, Castle."

"You're sure?" He hates every single thing about his voice. The quaver and the excitement and the stupid look he's absolutely sure he has on his face.

She rolls her eyes and heads for the living room. She leaves him standing there and he wonders if he should try harder to give her an out. He wonders how hard this is on her.

She throws him a look over her shoulder and it's not such a big deal and he wonders if he could be any more Martha Rodgers' son. He starts toward her, but she holds up a hand.

"My present?" She raises an eyebrow and tilts her head toward the hall table.

He snatches up the box and hurries after her. He's about to drop on the couch next to her, but she gives him a heavy look and makes an imperious gesture as she swings her feet up and waits for him to sit at the far end so she can drop them in his lap.

"Don't you want your wine first?" he says and it has a little edge to it.

"Oh, good idea. Very thoughtful, Castle." She grins and that's better. The cloud lifts and that's better.

He sets the box on the coffee table and pours for both of them. It's normal. It's better than normal and the excitement rises up in him again. He hands her the wine and takes up his post at the opposite end of the couch. He presses his thumbs into her arches and her head tips back. Her eyes close and she tells him about her day. She tries to tell him, but she keeps interrupting herself with satisfied little moans and sharp directions as his hands work the tension from each toe. He looks around at the firelight falling on the bare tree and the patiently waiting bins and her.

Her eyes snap open and she barks his name.

"What?" He blinks at her and follows her gaze. He's surprised to find that both his hands have worked their way well up her calf. He grins. "Oh. _Oh_."

"No," she says. "Not 'oh'."

"Not oh?" One fingertip slides up the wide leg of her trousers and skims the back of her knee. He pushes it, for all the good it does him.

"Not 'oh'," she repeats. "Because your mother and your daughter are going to be here soon and I am _not _getting up in the middle of the night to decorate when you remember that you can't wait another minute."

"Oh." His face falls. That _does _sound like him, doesn't it? "Oh."

She grins and drums her feet against his thigh, but he's still pouting. He's _pouting_. She sets her wine down and scoots across the couch. She plants a loud, wet kiss on his cheek. "Give me my present, Castle. That'll make you feel better."

It will, he realizes, and a grin breaks out all over his face.

He snags the box and presents it to her with a flourish. She takes her time with the ribbon because she knows it drives him crazy and he has only himself to blame. He can't resist doing something complicated every time he wraps one of these.

But she's working it now and he grabs for it. She pulls it back high over her head and there is a decidedly girly scream when he grabs her around the middle and hauls her toward him. She snaps the ribbon before he can get to it and elbows him in the chest as she settles herself under his arm. She ignores his exaggerated _oof_ as she lifts the lid and digs through the tissue paper.

It suddenly occurs to him to be nervous. A little nervous about the pictures. The first two at least.

But she pulls out the ornament and holds it up and the firelight catches it just right and she gives a soft laugh and lands a haphazard kiss on his chin. It spins on its ribbon and she just watches at first. She watches and her smile is wide. The motion slows.

It twists lazily and she brings it closer. She stops it altogether with her fingertips and it's the first picture facing her.

"Castle," she breathes. "Where did you get this. I've never even seen . ."

He kisses her cheek. It's warm and there's a little splash of color on it. She's blushing and he should have thought this through better. "No one has. I mean, just me. And Paula. I had to . . . the photographer wouldn't budge until I sicced Paula on him."

She twists around to look at him and he's blushing now. He's blushing under that frank, grateful gaze of hers. The one he still feels like he doesn't deserve.

"Thank you, Castle." She kisses him and he just nods, eyes on his lap. She ducks so he has to look at her. "Thank you for saving me from a world with that hair immortalized above the fold."

"Hey," he says as he taps the crystal with a fingernail. "I loved that hair."

She snorts and turns the ornament. He wonders about this one. If it will take her a minute, but she knows right away. "Where the _hell _was the photographer?"

"I have no idea!"

She turns to him and there's a hard, suspicious look on her face. "You didn't know? It wasn't a stunt for that stupid list?"

"No!" he says. It's more than a little sharp. "Of course I didn't know."

She blinks and pulls back. She looks away and back at him. "Sorry. I'm . . . sorry, Castle."

"I wouldn't have." He tips his forehead against her cheek. "Even then, I wouldn't have done that."

"I know. I'm sorry," she says quietly. She touches her fingertip to the crystal and studies the picture. "God, that was a _terrible _date."

He laughs against her ear. "Oh, I don't know. I thought it was pretty great. Even if you did drink half my shake."

"_That_ was not a date," she scoffs. "That was . . . restitution. It was your fault I didn't get to eat anything."

"How was it my . . ." He shakes his head. She shivers as his cheek rasps against hers. "I'm not even going to ask how it's my fault. But it was totally a date."

She shakes _her _head and decides it's not worth arguing about. She turns the ornament again and goes quiet. He wonders how she knows, but it's the flowers, he supposes. He wonders if she remembers the rest and he's shy about it.

She remembers lots of things. Big and small moments.

But he's a writer and it's different for him. And he knows it overwhelms her sometimes. The way he files everything away and sometimes she feels like he's not fighting fair and he doesn't mean it like that. He just can't help it. It's important. Everything about her is important and sometimes he's so bad at realizing that he's living too much in his own head and making too much of some comment of hers that she didn't mean anything by.

And he's shy about this all of a sudden. The picture. That night. The ornament and what it means to him. He doesn't know how much he should say and then she surprises him.

"That was a date."

"What?" He turns her toward him. "How could that have been a _date_? You wouldn't even let me pay for your hot chocolate and you . . ."

His brain catches up with his mouth, then. She's unhappy.

She looks _so_ unhappy, but she raises her eyes to his and doesn't flinch. "And I was with Josh. And you weren't with Gina any more and I told myself that I was just . . . that it was something friends do. That a friend would do that for a friend, but . . ."

She trails off and he kisses her before he can say anything stupid. Then he says it anyway. "I wish I'd known it was a date. I would have kissed you goodnight. I wanted to kiss you."

He doesn't realize it's stupid until she's pulling away. She pulls away and sets the ornament carefully on the coffee table and he can't believe how stupid he is.

But it's so far gone. So long ago and she's here now and it just doesn't matter. To him it doesn't matter because they've ended up here. Tangled up together on his couch waiting for his family. Waiting to decorate for Christmas and it just doesn't matter.

But she's sitting with her feet flat on the floor listening to the faint _tink _of crystal as it rocks back and forth. She's stumbling over her words. "I'm sorry . . . I wasn't . . . I'm sorry it took me so long and that I'm still not . . . I'm sorry . . ."

He tugs her back to him. He folds his arms around her and murmurs to her that he's not sorry and they're here now. He just holds on to her until she's quiet. Until she sags against his chest.

It's not long. It's over before very long and he wonders how much of this is really about that night. About whether it was a date or not and who was fair and who wasn't. He wonders how much of this is about Christmas and the fact that this is an effort for her.

He's about to ask. He's about to offer. To take her out. To take her somewhere. To get on a plane and take her away until the whole season is over. Until January tenth. He's about to offer her anything she wants when he feels her arms tighten around him and she's kissing him and it's sudden and fierce and he jerks back in surprise when she ends it.

"You're right." She's looking up at him and her eyes are a little bright, but she's smiling and it's . . . calm, too. Like whatever just happened bled out of her and she's calmer now. Like it's one less thing weighing her down. "You're right, Castle. We're here and it's Christmas . . ." She tips her head to the side and narrows her eyes. "Or it will be, like, _weeks _from now."

"Three," he says pointedly. "_Three_ weeks, which is hardly enough time to rotate through all my train set ups."

She shakes her head and pushes up from the couch. "I guess we'd better get started again."

She reaches for the ornament and holds it up to the light. It's smudged with all the handling. She tugs her sleeve down over her palm and swipes at it, but it's knit and it just makes things worse.

"Here." He reaches for it and tugs one of his shirttails free.

She bats his hand away but tugs him closer by the fabric so she can do it herself. He grabs for her hips. He crowds against her and she twists away, polishing the delicate surface until she's satisfied.

"There." She holds it up between them and the light catches it differently. It catches it just the way it did for him almost a year ago and her lips part in a soft _O. _She holds it up higher.

"It's beautiful. It's like . . . I'm holding my breath like it's going to burst any second." Her voice is hushed and she can't take her eyes off it.

"It won't," he promises. "It won't."


	12. Perpetual, 3 x 12, 5 x 14, 5 x 24

Title: Perpetual

WC: ~5400

Rating: T

Summary: "He's not the one who should be trying to make this ok."

Episodes: Poof! You're dead (3 x12), Reality Star Struck (5 x 14), Watershed (5 x 24)

A/N: This one took a strange turn and ended up more or less entirely from Kate's perspective. I think this is Brain's way of tricking me into telling post-Watershed lies. Not sure how well this one works and it feels weird that almost all the story of how Castle came to have the gift got edited out. As always, would love to know what you think.

BerkieLynn: Eternamente diabólica

* * *

She wakes to unfamiliar dark and a throbbing toe. It takes her longer than it should to remember that she's home. This is home now. Her bed and sheets and everything, even if the air feels wrong and the dark is unfamiliar. This is home.

She moves past the annoyance that it's something that it still takes time to remember. Past the feeling in the pit of her stomach that she won't call sadness. She moves on to her toe. The pain is incredible. It would have to be to wake her these days.

The hours are long, the work is grueling in a peculiar way, and however unfamiliar the dark is, she falls immediately into dreamless sleep every night. Every night or whenever it is that she happens to make it over her own threshold, the dreamless sleep is a given. A mercy. Respite from the feeling that isn't sadness.

_Threshold. _

The word and the pain radiating up through her ankle focus her attention. The box. She must have kicked off her shoes in the dark and walked right into that fucking box. Again.

She throws off the bedding and her whole body seizes up in the cold. The links of recent memory pull taut. She can't remember what time it was when she finally stumbled in, only that the walk through the pitch black from car to building had left her soaked with sweat. Only thinking that the landlord still hasn't dealt with the security lighting. Only wondering for the thousandth time in seven weeks whose brilliant idea it was to move the nation's capital to a swamp.

_Tidal plain_.

She presses a palm to her stomach and wills that particular memory away. His voice. His helpful, superior, annoying voice, desperate and bright and chattering with interesting facts about her new home. Dispelling myth. It's like punctuation on how wrong everything is. How backward and upside down and _wrong._

He doesn't do that. He's not the one who corrects _her_ with facts. He's the one who waves her off when she insists on precision. Who argues that _swamp _is a better word. He talks about monosyllables and plosives and how mouth feel matters more than dry truths. He scoffs that no one knows what a tidal plain is anyway, and swamp makes for a better story.

He's supposed to be the one to do all of that.

He's not the one who should be talking her into this. He's not the one who should be saying that it's not so bad. That the air is just as hot and thick in New York, and her old landlord never did fix it so she could turn off the kitchen sink entirely without a wrench. That the dark won't be unfamiliar forever. That she'll settle in. That before she knows it, she'll wake up knowing she's home.

He's not the one who should be trying to make this ok.

She presses the heel of her hand hard against the soft emptiness of her abdomen. She doesn't think she's eaten today. Not since breakfast, anyway, and that was half a stale "bagel" from the break room.

She swings her feet to the floor. Winces as the pain twines around her shin and up through the back of her calf. She needs something for it, but knows anything she tries is likely to come right back up with nothing on her stomach.

She stands swaying in the middle of the darkened bedroom, undecided and shivering.

_Shivering. _

She hobbles to the overworked window unit and cranks it down. The dull white roar cuts out, and the room fills with the noise of traffic. Like the heat, the traffic never lets up and it's somehow louder than New York. Stranger and more intrusive. Another unfamiliar thing about the dark here.

The shivering dies down. The heat is seeping in through the poorly insulated windows already, and she can't remember if she left the unit running in the living room. Can't remember if she paused to hiss against the pain in the dark or not.

She limps through the bedroom door now and straight into a wall of warm, moist air that grabs her empty stomach and tugs it down and down. She's the furthest thing from hungry.

She thinks about turning around. About crawling back into bed in the hopes that sleep will come again, but the pain in her foot has different ideas. She makes her way slowly into the kitchen, twisting the air conditioner's reluctant dial along the way.

She's not sure why she goes for the freezer. She wants something to ice her foot, and apparently she's expecting a bag of frozen peas to appear by magic. Apparently she's expecting to find something other than the half-eaten pint of ice cream that was its sole occupant the last time she can remember opening the damned thing.

She does.

It's not brimming, by any means, but there are few frozen dinners, some veggie burger patties and a couple of packs of buns of some kind. The old pint is gone and there are half a dozen in a variety of flavors in its place. And the ice cube trays are topped off.

It's what does her in: The ice cube trays are topped off.

She sinks on to a stool at the breakfast bar and lets the tears roll down her face as she works her way mechanically through half a pint of her favorite flavor. It's hardly crying. It doesn't feel like crying. It starts and stops on its own and she feels exactly as terrible at the end as she did when it started. Like the tears having nothing to do with her.

After a clumsy trial-and-error search, she finds ziplock bags in a small pull-out cabinet she's not sure she knew existed. She stands at the sink with the tray and it's a long, lonely moment in the unfamiliar dark before she can bring herself to crack the plastic spine and catch the shower of ice in the bag's wide mouth.

She runs the empty tray under a gentle stream at the sink. Fills each compartment to exactly the same height. She sets the tray carefully back in the freezer and makes her hobbling way back down the hall.

She turns into the bathroom and hates the sticky feel of linoleum under her feet. She yanks open the medicine cabinet, half expecting it to be empty. Knowing it's not. She breaks the seal on a bottle of ibuprofen and downs a handful with a swallow of water from the Batman toothpaste cup that showed up during one of his visits.

She didn't notice until after he'd left. Has no idea how many days or weeks it might have been there on the edge of the sink before then. Can't really remember if she thanked him for it.

She crawls directly on to the bed. Doesn't bother with the blankets. The room is already too warm again, and she knows there's no way she won't fall asleep with the ice pack on her foot anyway. She drops it with a little too much force on her injured foot and hisses as she sinks back against the pillows.

She has barely enough energy to reach for her phone. Barely enough energy to make sense of the stupid security measures to unlock it and call up his contact information. Barely enough energy to tap out a text before she's unconscious again: _Thank you. _

She wakes the next morning to unfamiliar sunlight with the phone still in her hand and a sodden mess of lukewarm bedding tangled around her feet. The pain in her foot has receded to a dull throb and the swelling has gone down enough that she thinks she'll be able to get into half-decent shoes.

The phone in her hand is lit up with half a dozen notifications. His is the first: _For you, anything._

* * *

She stands at the edge of the sea of desks and thinks for a moment that they've done another fucking re-org. She counts over from the window and across from the doorway and it takes her more than a moment to realize that her desk is right where she left it too few hours before. It takes her more than a moment to recognize the featureless expanse as having anything to do with her.

She nods to the few people who make eye contact. Most of them nod back. She exchanges a word or two with a few more, and tries not to limp. She had ice cream and another icepack for breakfast. That and a second handful of ibuprofen have the pain ratcheted back again, but the shoes might have been ambitious.

Ambitious, but she wanted them. The familiar distance from the ground. The well-known alignment of thigh and calf. Heel and toe propelling her over asphalt and terrazzo in sure strides. Ambitious, but something of herself and she wanted that today.

She settles into her chair and it all starts over. She chips away at the project she left off on the night before, the starting point as arbitrary as the ending. She moves paper from in to out. She gets her inbox down to triple digits and takes her turn in a dozen or so games of phone tag.

She is polite and efficient. She checks things off her to-do list. She answers the phone to people who sound annoyed that she isn't her own voice mail, and the morning passes almost before she knows it. She has the nagging feeling that she hasn't accomplished much. Nothing, maybe, even though her wrists ache and she must have at least one paper cut on every single finger.

She's thinking about lunch. Whether it's better to face the heat or a limp salad from the cafeteria. If a glimpse of the sun is worth ten minutes in a bathroom stall blotting the sweat from her skin before it can soak through her blouse. Her gaze skips over the bent heads around her and she wonders if she should even take lunch. If she's supposed to. If people _do. _

She doesn't know.

It's been seven weeks and she doesn't know.

She doesn't know if there's anything other than godforsaken chain places within walking distance. If there's a watering hole they call their own. If people _do _that.

She sees people come and go with brown bags from the break room and take-out containers on their desks. The cafeteria is never full, but it's not empty, either, and she'd swear she's never seen any one person leave for more than 15 minutes at a time.

She sees people eat together or chatting by the elevator in twos and threes, but not often the same people. It's not just that she's the new guy. No one seems particularly close. She doesn't know who gets along and who doesn't. If there are rivalries or love affairs gone wrong.

She has no idea if anyone is married. There are wedding rings, but not many, and she'd swear they come and go. Or maybe it's the people who do.

She doesn't know them. If they have families. Where they came from before they landed in this strange sea of sameness where no one ever borrows a pen or tells an off-color joke and her standard-issue stapler is always exactly where she left it.

There's nothing on her desk that isn't functional. That wasn't issued to her. No elephants or candy dish or pad full of doodles. No set of his and hers pens because they are wildly pen incompatible. No half-dead dry erase markers. Her standard-issue coffee mug has the DOJ seal on it. So does everyone else's.

There's nothing on _anyone's _desk. Not really. No photographs or fetishes or tchotchkes. There's the occasional American flag in a pen cup, criss-crossed with the DC flag for a few of the daring. She'd swear that someone had a stylish little analog clock her first week. Something bright brass with a happy, solid tick, but it's gone now.

Whether or not the owner is gone with it, she has no idea. There's a lot of turnover and what sometimes feels like constant reorganization. The investigative team has held steady so far, but she spends a lot of time having the same conversations with new counterparts in other units.

Someone is an enthusiastic fan of the open office plan, and there's little rhyme or reason to the layout. To whose blank, impersonal desk is near whose or where anyone might find anyone else on a particular team.

It's not that people are unfriendly. They exchange pleasantries. She asks questions and sometimes they'll blink as if they're surprised she doesn't know. But they answer politely. They're helpful when asked. They offer more than she knew to wonder about sometimes and things seem less strange. A little less strange.

No one is unfriendly. There's painstaking attention to courtesy and cooperation within teams. There's also posturing and competition between them, but even that's polite and she hasn't had time to run afoul of it.

Well, not much time.

Stack has "dropped by" her desk a couple of times. Stack is the only one who has ever dropped by her desk or anyone else's desk as far as she can tell. It's not a dropping-by kind of place. It's not the kind of place where coworkers scoot across the aisle on their desk chairs to share something on a monitor or listen in on speaker phone.

So Stack's dropping by is noteworthy, especially as they've hardly worked together since she started. But he's made more than a few sidelong remarks about the usual ways of doing things and the need for clear and appropriate information flow. He's let her know that she's stepping on toes without giving her much of an idea whose or how. He's given her warnings, and if they're not quite friendly, they're not unfriendly either.

No one is unfriendly.

No one is anything.

And there is absolutely nothing on anyone's desk.

* * *

The fight is tremendous.

She's late.

She has a "mission-critical" call scheduled for late in the day by a contact on another team. She waits ten minutes past the time on her calendar. One of Stack's helpful hints had clued her into the fact that who calls whom is important for some reason. She gets the contact's his voicemail. His voicemail, which declares him to be out of the office until the end of the week.

But even with the time it takes to send a politic email in which she manages _not _to use the phrase "What the actual fuck?" she still leaves early. Maybe she leaves early. She doesn't know when people are "supposed" to leave any more than she knows if they go to lunch.

At any rate, she leaves early enough that she thinks there's more than enough time to hit the one Chinese place she's found—_he's_ found, actually—that isn't a complete and utter failure and be back at the apartment in time for their phone call.

It's not. It's not early enough. It's not plenty of time. She gets caught on the wrong side of a motorcade and traffic absolutely crawls for the last few miles to her place.

It's full dark as she hustles toward her building. She's late and she hasn't eaten and the phone is ringing when she stumbles across the threshold.

It's the land line. She's been wondering why her cell has been stubbornly silent, but of course he'd remember that she gets terrible cell reception inside the apartment. It's the land line. She can't remember where she left the damned cordless handset. She's late and she wonders how many times he's called already. How many patient times he's hung up before it went to voice mail and tried again.

She sees the handset on the console table and lunges for it. She kicks the box along the way, and even though she's wearing shoes, it's agony.

She says his name through her teeth and there's this pause—this hesitation. He asks if it's a bad time, like he's a fucking telemarketer and that is just _it. _For her, that is just _it. _

She sees red. It's not a metaphor. Her blood is pounding behind her eyes and she's screaming at him. Terrible things about how passive–aggressive he's being. That he hasn't said a thing in two months that isn't a complete fucking lie. She screams terrible things and every single one feels like the last thing she'll ever say to him, but she can't stop. She can't stop.

She's screaming at him and he's screaming back. Except he doesn't scream. He's all quiet, controlled fury in a voice so cold she can't even attach it to the man she knows. The man whose bed she shared for a year and whose heart she knows she's had for longer than that.

He says terrible things, too. Awful accusations in a dead, cutting undertone. That she's been trying to manipulate him since she flew out for the interview. Trying get him to end things so she can spend the rest of her life vindicated and alone. That she's the same coward she was two years ago when Montgomery died.

It's tremendous. It goes on and on. It builds and builds and he _is _screaming then.

She tastes black satisfaction when he finally raises his voice. When he's finally shouting loud enough that she can hear it rattling the glass in his office, and he asks what she wants him to say. If she wants him to hang up for the last time or give her an ultimatum. If she wants to hear that it's over if she doesn't come home right the fuck now to settle down and have fat children with him.

She snorts.

It's a repulsive sound. She's been choking back sobs and her nose is streaming and she snorts.

_Fat children_.

The storm breaks with it. The phrase and the unattractive sound from her.

She goads him about how fat these children will be. Why he _anticipates_ fat children when she knows that Alexis was about the size of a kitten. When she knows that he obsessed over how tiny she was until she went to junior high.

They laugh weakly together about how many fat children there will be and what they'll name them. They discuss what kind of sports teams they might field with this mighty army of fat children.

It's ridiculous.

It's another evasion.

It's enough for the moment.

It's a respite and they make their way back to something else that's quieter if not more kind. Apologies for some things. Softened words for other things. Things each of them stands firm on.

He asks if she wants to come home and she won't let him correct himself. She won't let him take back the word, because this _isn't _home. She might stay. He thinks she should, even though he hates it. She thinks she needs to, even though she hates it. But it's not home.

They talk about that. Why it is, and he reminds her that she spent a long time at twelfth. That what she has there didn't happen over night and it never happens for some. That there are people who don't have anything on their desk. Whose partners aren't family.

He reminds her, and she warns him not to make excuses. That she's so fucking sick of him trying to make this ok. He says he's not. That he hates saying any of it and he can't stand to see her miserable. He hates everything about this job and the way she handled it. The way they've both been handling it. He hates that New York isn't home anymore. Without her, it's not home, but he's not making excuses for DC, either.

They talk about what to do with that. What they _can _do. What's possible and reasonable and too much. They don't have any answers. Neither of them has any answers.

It all goes on and on, too, and even though it's better at the end—it's a _lot _better—she feels like everything has been pulled out of her. She's exhausted in a new way and everything hurts.

It's the talk they should have had two months ago. It's the conversation they should have had on the swings. It's all the things they should have tackled head on months before that. It's everything they've failed at. It's not even the half of it. It's not even that much, but it's something.

They hang up a long time later and she can't sleep. For the first time in seven weeks, she can't sleep.

She doesn't give it much time. She doesn't linger in the unfamiliar dark. She knows the signs. She's exhausted down to the last nerve fiber, but she won't sleep. She throws off the covers and shivers in the cold. She snaps off the bedroom air conditioner and twists on the one in the living room on her way to the kitchen.

She grabs a pint of ice cream, a spoon, and a utility knife. She drops cross-legged to the floor in front of the box and slices through the packing tape. Right through the block letters: OFFICE.

* * *

She has to dig for it.

She has to pull out the heavy arc of elephants and set them aside with an apology. A decision that they'll live here now. They'll live on a window sill or an end table and the dark and light will feel a little less unfamiliar.

She has to make a pile of the various notes and doodles. Things she couldn't bear to throw away when she filled this box that last day.

A caricature of Gates she'd found smoothed and taped down in the very back of her drawer when she'd come back from her father's cabin. A sketch of Montgomery in profile. Neither of them can remember when he did that one.

He's a terrible artist. Terrible. But these capture something true about their subjects and she couldn't bear to throw them away.

She doesn't know what she'll do with them. She thinks about colorful magnets and the refrigerator. Not like her at all. Like kindergarten art, but she might like it. It might remind her of old friends and fat children and him. She makes a pile.

She lifts out a mug and her chest feels tight. It's plain. Nothing special and something she had long before him, but it has the weight of his fingerprints now. The sheltering curve of his palm and she wonders how many coffees it is now. How many she owes him. She sets it aside for the moment. It's too much right now. It's too much in the unfamiliar dark, and she wants this thing. This particular thing.

She finds it tucked away safe. She's not entirely sure how it ended up in this box.

It was never on her desk. It was something for home. Something he'd see and _tsk _about when she let the rocks glass full of water run dry. He'd refill it and set things to rights on the ledge in the bedroom. Insist that she be the one to lay a heavy fingertip on the flat velvet of the purple top hat and set him going.

She doesn't know how it ended up with her office things. It was always for home. Her Valentine's Day present. Not the real one. Not the first or the second, but something from the closet.

* * *

_She's annoyed with him. Not just about the debacle with the earrings, though that, too. _

_He's over the moon about the drawer. Over the moon, and it makes her chest tight in at least three different ways. _

_He insists they have to stay at her place the next night. He insists, but he wants to stop by the loft first, even though it takes them forever to get out of the precinct. To dot the _I_s and cross the _T_s with him 'helping.' Even though it's late and she's tired and wants to be out of her heels and into her oldest yoga pants. He wants to stop at the loft and he wants to stay at her place. _

_He needs _things,_ he says. _

_He needs a moleskine and one of his ridiculously overpriced pens for the drawer. Like he doesn't have the same damned thing in some pocket or other at any given moment. _

_He needs three of his favorite shirts to sleep in. Three of her favorite shirts to steal. _

_He needs the pink, fuzzy handcuffs that she's told him _no_ about a hundred times. She's told him no and pretended not to notice as he steals her own set. _

_She's tired and he's taking his time about the whole thing. She's half asleep on the foot of the bed when he emerges from the closet with his hand outstretched. When he turns the silver-wrapped box over to her with a shy kind of flourish and tells her it's a Valentine's Day present. _

"_Not the real one," he amends quickly. "But something in the mean time." _

_He lets her work on the bow for once. He sits next to her and piles things into the leather duffel bag while her fingers tug experimentally. She breaks it in the end and it makes him grin. It makes him lean in and slide and impatient kiss along her jaw. _

_The box is a little the worse for wear. The corners are crushed and the retro packaging is criss-crossed with violent-looking scratches. _

_She looks from the box to him and back again. He's still now, but keeps quiet even though she can practically see the story buzzing around in his mouth. He wants her to guess. He wants her to tell her part. _

"_A drinking bird?" She says it out loud and there's a question mark at the end. _

"_Drake's," he says, and it's an effort not to go on. She can see that it's an effort. That he's prompting her with something that's barely silence. _

_He's prompting her, but she's still not getting it. Why he picked this up. Why he wrapped it and slotted it into the reverent pile of things he's never given her. _

"_The magic shop," she says slowly. "Why did they even have this?" _

"_Because it's magic." He rolls his eyes. He's still an amateur, but it's a good effort. It approaches some lower-level Beckett eye rolls. "Perpetual motion." _

"_It's _physics_," she shoots back and she gets it then. _

_He knows she does. He gives an affronted sniff to hide his grin. "Any sufficiently advanced technology . . ."_

"_Is science," she finishes. She stabs at the box. Underlines the words with an emphatic finger. " 'The classic scientific wonder.' _Scientific_, Castle." _

_He lunges at her, then. She holds it high above her head and the duffel bag tumbles to the floor. He catches her. She lets him and they fall together, loud and clumsy and laughing. Half undressed and perfect. Physics and magic. _

_She tells him a story afterward. As they lay there panting and she knows he still wants to go to her place. That he still wants to fill up his drawer and spend the first night there with it. She gives him another gift, too. She tells him a story. _

"_Thermodynamics," she says. _

"_Beckett." He groans against her. He rumbles into her skin. "God. You have to give me, like, 45 minutes before you start back in with the five-syllable words." _

"_Shut up." She pinches his side and he lets out a high-pitched squeak. "I'm telling a story." _

"_Mmm. Make it a 45-minute story." He opens his mouth against her neck and it's almost a no-minute story. _

"_Second-semester chemistry." She stutters it out and he pauses. He lets up a little because he wants the story like always. "Thermodynamics. The professor brought one of these in." _

_She reaches for the box on the night stand. He takes advantage. Palms on bare skin and more of his weight shifted on to her. Keeping her close. But he lightens his touch again as she brings the box to rest on her chest and tilts her chin down at it. He wants the story. _

"_He brought one of these in and an aquarium. He put the bird inside with a glass of water. He started it up and then closed the top. No explanation. Just went into his lecture." _

_He's quiet. His fingers busy themselves along her ribs as he thinks it over. "It stopped, right?" _

_She nods. "Closed system. It stopped." _

"_Jerk." He blows a raspberry against her shoulder. "Professor. Not you." _

"_He started it back up again." She laughs and swats him away. "Just kept on lecturing. Opened the aquarium and dunked his beak and let it go for the rest of the period." _

"_Still a jerk," he mutters and her chest is tight again. _

_It still catches her off guard. She's so used to his joy. His readiness to smile and laugh and see magic in simple things. But the joy goes as quickly as it comes. He guards it, but the world is hard and sometimes it goes anyway. _

_She kisses him. "Not a jerk. You'd have liked him. He carried this enameled metal briefcase. Royal blue like a cookie tin with these fairytale panels painted on it." _

"_But he ruined it." He's whining now. It's exaggerated and over the top. The joy isn't really gone. "He ruined the magic." _

"_He didn't," she insists. She kisses him. Bites his lip for emphasis. "It's still magic. Sufficiently advanced."_

"_I guess that's ok then," he grumbles. _

_He nods off. So does she. It's more than 45 minutes when she wakes him up. When she lures him out of the bed with five-syllable words and he gives sleepy chase as she gathers up his tumbled things and tosses them back into the duffel bag. _

_He snatches her around the waist and says it's fine. It's fine if they sleep here tonight, but she buttons him up and drags him through the office. Through the living room and out the door. _

_She wants to fill up his drawer and spend their first night with it._

* * *

It feels like crying. She tips the slender glass body out of the box into her hand. She curls the bulge of it in her palm and tips the bright liquid back and forth. Something releases. So much of the bad of the last seven weeks lets go. It leaves her. It feels like crying, but her eyes are finally dry.

She sets the bird on the hall table. She sets the box nearby. She fetches the Batman cup from the bathroom and fills it with water. She touches a finger to the flat velvet of the purple top hat. She tips the heavy red head and watches. Perpetual motion even after she falls asleep.

She wakes the next morning, stiff and sore and empty feeling. Empty but not hollow. She eats. Toast, because there's bread surviving in the fridge and peanut butter because she wants to feel full again. She makes a grocery list and texts him for the address of the nearest store. Not the nearest. The one that's better because it's open later and it has a real produce section. She remembers him telling her.

She remembers, but he floods her phone with helpful suggestions. She texts him back. Tells him to knock it off or there'll be no fat children.

He texts her one last thing. A picture of of an immensely, comically fat baby.

She finds a shoebox. She fills it. She stops the bird and tells him it's just for now. She slides him back into his own box and sets it along side the handful of things she's decided on. Her chipped blue mug. The batman tumbler. The first dirty limerick he ever left her.

She'll tape that inside her drawer. She'll fill her own mug every morning and wash it out every night. She'll use the standard-issue mug for pens. Hers and the one or two of his she found in the box. She'll keep the tumbler topped off and the bird will have a place of honor. In between her phone and the stapler that's always exactly where she left it.

The bird will do the rest. Physics and magic. Sufficiently advanced and indistinguishable.

_Perpetual motion. _


	13. A Taste of Honey, 1 x 05

Title: A Taste of Honey

WC: ~6600

Rating: T

Summary: "She forgets herself every once in a while, and that feels like a miracle. It's taken weeks for even that much, and he's hungry for it already. He really, really likes when she forgets herself and gives him something. A gesture or a name or the face she makes at the thought of black coffee."

Episodes: A Chill Goes Through Her Veins (1 x15); references to Flowers for your grave (1 x 01)

A/N: I've wrapped around to season 1 again in my rewatches. This is such a pivotal episode that I find new things to love and be interested in every time. This time around, I was struck by the fact that Castle clearly could have found out a lot about Beckett by other means, but he hasn't. And, of course, by the fact that they really hit their Tracy/Hepburn stride in this episode.

I did play with the timeline. On canvas, they don't go on the "field trip" until the morning after Beckett visits the loft for the first time, and then they're chasing leads all the next day. Here, I've gotten Castle out of his tragic Grimace sweater and into respectable clothing so that the scene at Roger's apartment takes place immediately after their conversation in the office and the rest of the lead chasing occurs the next morning. I hope you'll forgive me.

Never forget that this is all, ultimately, BerkieLynn's fault.

* * *

He's frustrated.

She frustrates him in all kinds of ways.

Some of them are fun.

Some of them are more or less extended foreplay. He's pretty convinced they are, anyway, and he's all over that.

So to speak.

He's all over it, even if he's surprised by just _how _extended it's turning out to be.

But right now? This is not foreplay. This is not the fun kind of frustration at all.

They're driving back from Jersey, and she's pissed.

She's _pissed_. Not irritated. Not annoyed. Not bothered. He's been riding along with irritated, annoyed, and bothered for weeks now, and that's not what this is.

She's _pissed. _It's new. It's interesting. It has potential.

He makes a mistake.

_That what happened to your dad?_

And just like that, she's not pissed any more. She's not anything.

She closes down so suddenly—so absolutely—that he blinks. His mind stumbles and the words jerk back. They hit him in the back of the throat like he's run full tilt into something he never saw coming. That he still can't quite see, even after the fact.

She glances at him. Takes her eyes off the road and it's not even anger. Or anger is the least of it. And then she won't look at him at all, and it seems like all he can see is her. Alone, even though a minute ago . . .

A minute ago.

He cringes even before the close confines of the car swallow up the words.

_That what happened to your dad?_

It's so _clumsy._

Like she's going to just blurt it out. Like Kate Beckett is going to lay her life story at his feet because he makes one clever fucking guess. Because he pushes the right button.

He'd like to kick himself. He'd like to apologize. He'd like to rewind the last sixty seconds of their lives. For once, he'd like to keep the observation from leaving his mouth before he has a chance to think things through.

And _that_ is fucking frustrating.

Because he's not big on that. Thinking things through.

This is his bread and butter. Observation, provocation, reaction. Like every person in his life—old and new—is made of buttons to push.

And he gets away with it. It's been a long time and a lot of money ago since anyone has really objected to his particular brand of harassment. He's a best-selling novelist and everyone loves to think they're interesting. That their story might surprise him.

Observation, provocation, reaction. It's how he works. How he builds his characters from the inside out. How he puts them in motion.

But with her—in moments like these—he catches himself. Uncharacteristic apologies on his lips and his finger paused over the metaphorical button. Second thoughts about pushing, even if he does it anyway most of the time.

Even if he pushes harder than he might've in the first place. Harder even than he usually does.

Because the second thoughts make him angry. He hates the sour taste of apology and this sudden, inconvenient sense that maybe he ought to think things through.

That maybe she doesn't want to hear every smug observation or self-congratulatory insight about what makes her tick. That maybe she's earned her privacy. That she deserves the kindness of him keeping his mouth shut for once.

It's frustrating.

Not the fun kind.

* * *

He taps the space bar for the hundredth time. It's a game. He counts the number of times the cursor blinks. He watches the screen for the tell-tale fade just before the screensaver comes up. Then and only then does he let himself hit the space bar.

He tells himself he's thinking about the case. He is. Kind of.

He tells himself he's thinking about the book. He isn't. Not really.

He's tying his own hands in a lot of ways here. It's been so long since he's written at all that anything would be good enough. Anything would do.

He's done it before. Dashed something off to meet his obligations. To clear out the attic of his mind and get on with it.

But he wants this book—her book—to be more than good enough. He wants it to be more than just the next thing.

He turns his mind on a diagonal. He thinks about the two together. The case. The book. Melanie. Nikki.

_Kate. _

It hasn't been a total loss. The case. Him pushing her buttons. Her shutting him down. Even if he still has a strange ache when he thinks about the blankness of her in that moment.

_My dad? _

It's not a total loss. He has something here. Backstory. But it's frustrating. It's so little. Hardly anything more than he had weeks ago. Confirmation, maybe, but not much more.

And the thing is, he doesn't really need this from her. There's another way to go about this. It's not his first choice, but it would get the job done.

He doesn't need the backstory from her. He _wants _it.

He wants her to open up.

She does sometimes. She forgets herself every once in a while, and that feels like a miracle. It's taken weeks for even that much, and he's hungry for it already.

He really, _really _likes when she forgets herself and gives him something. A gesture or a name or the face she makes at the thought of black coffee.

It makes him sit up, eager for more. For whatever she'll give him.

It's kind of crazy. He can't decide what kind of frustrating it is. Good, bad, or indifferent.

It's been years since he wanted to hear anyone's version of themselves. He spends a lot of time trying to shut people up. Trying to head off their life stories at the pass.

He knows them anyway. Better than they do. What they're finessing or playing up. What they're in denial about. Most people are no mystery to anyone but themselves.

Sometimes he thinks she's not so different. In some ways, she's not. She has a story. He had it right weeks ago. During the Tisdale case. The first time she shut him down. The first time he ran up against the hard boundary around her and blinked.

He had the broad strokes, anyway.

_Something happened. Not to you. You're wounded, but you're not that wounded. _

He could write Nikki today if he were content for it to be good enough. If he were content with the broad strokes.

The little he knows about her already makes her more interesting than most people. Maybe more interesting than most characters he's written.

What he knows about her should be more than enough, but it's not.

_Cute trick. But don't think you know me. _

It's frustrating.

He misses the moment. The last blink of the cursor and the quick drain of light. He's distracted and the screensaver beats him.

He jams his thumb down hard and brings back the empty page.

It feels like an omen. A sign that it might be time to give in. To act on the reality that he doesn't _need _this from her. That it might be time to get over wanting it from her.

But he likes to tell himself that she wants it, too. That she wants him to ask.

When it's the good kind of frustrating—the kind that's like foreplay—he likes to tell himself that she _wants_ him to draw her out.

Most people do, after all. But Kate Beckett is not most people.

She doesn't want him to ask. She doesn't want anyone to ask.

And it's not like he _has_ to ask. Not her, anyway.

It has to be a matter of record, right?

It's a personal tragedy—immediate family, most likely—but one that would have left a mark on the wider world.

Even in New York—even with two murders a day—someone would have caught the story. There must be newspaper articles. Interviews and follow-ups. Editorials on the anniversary. Solemn-faced reporters at the scene, sharp-tongued and indignant that the case has gone cold. That the system has failed.

An unsolved homicide—and it has to be a homicide—with a white, upper-middle-class victim. That wouldn't go unnoticed. It wouldn't go without comment.

And even without the media, he has options. He's not sure why he has to keep reminding himself of that.

Then he thinks about her. That moment in the car and how far away she looked. So far from anyone. Alone.

_My dad? _

It's where she lives. Absolutely alone in some nameless state.

But it wasn't always that way. He has to remind himself of that.

It's not always that way now. Not quite.

She's close with her team. Ryan and Esposito and the Captain in a way. It's . . . that's what's keeping him up nights lately.

_Well._

It's one thing keeping him up, anyway.

The way they have this absolute faith in one another. The way none of them has to look over their shoulder or ask twice. The way there's never an instant spent second guessing each other.

It's something beyond family. Beyond the closeness of lovers. It's the stark intimacy of people who know every door they walk through might be the one they never walk out of.

He wants to capture that. He needs to capture that if this book is going to be any good at all.

And he wants it to be good.

He wants to capture that rock-solid belief in her team. The unshakeable certainty they all have on the job.

He wants to capture the fact that she's alone. For all that, there's a hard boundary around most of who she is.

She's alone.

Still.

As far as backstory goes, they have to know something. She didn't get where she is as quickly as she did without a story. Even if it's half fiction, half speculation, and a single iota of truth, they have to know something.

He can ask them.

Esposito and Ryan might be tricky. In their different ways they're protective of her. Wary of the whole arrangement he has for her sake, even if personally they're kind of into it. Even if they'd willingly tell their own stories.

But Montgomery likes him. Likes the Knicks tickets and face time with the Mayor, at least, and he's eager to help.

He could ask them. All of them. Any of them. Even if it's just the basics, they'd know _something. _Whether he's searching for Beckett or some other name. The basic time frame.

That part's tricky. The when of it. Whether it's going to be a web search in the comfort of his own boxers or something further back. He doesn't think so, though. He doesn't think she's lived with it so long that he's looking at nothing but physical clippings and microfiche. That's not where the watch and the ring lead him.

They _could_ be old, of course. The ring, especially, is something he can spin that way.

Something too big for a little girl's fingers, so she threads it on to a long chain and it becomes a habit. Wearing it next to her skin like that. Growing into it and still keeping it around her neck, where it doesn't quite disappear under her no-nonsense work clothes.

It could go back a long way, but he doesn't think so. He thinks she would have broken the habit. That the uncompromising woman she grew up to be would have put away childish things. That she would have held on to them, but there would have been one moment when she stopped. One morning when she put them away for good.

He thinks about the car ride. She was _pissed. _Her body all upright lines and sharp, furious angles. She was pissed enough to forget herself. To give him something.

That tells him the same thing. The ring. The watch. That anger. They all lead him in the same direction. These aren't wounds she's been nursing since childhood.

Her fury at Sloan and his ilk. It's . . . complex. There's a through narrative to it. The bottomed-out disappointment of an adult. The sophisticated rage of a professional who knows how it should have gone. How it ought to go.

It has a logic and coherence from end to end that tells him she was older when it happened. Not the woman she became, but the one she could have been. Not a child.

Everything he knows points to this being pretty simple.

A web search. The cursor blinking in a different box and less than a second to most of what he needs. From there, an informed fishing expedition with the people who know her best.

But he stares at the blinking cursor.

He stares at the blank page.

He doesn't open a new browser tab.

He doesn't need it from her, but he wants it.

* * *

He doesn't know what this is.

He really doesn't have the faintest idea what switch got flipped. What button someone pushed that has her on his doorstep.

In his office.

Letting him get away with Batman references.

He doesn't even know what possesses him to go there. To needle her about origin stories. He's still reeling from the moment in the car. Sore all over from running up against that thing that's not even anger and more than a little gun shy about it all.

Even though she started it. Even though she forgot herself and let him have something, and . . . she's a Batman fan?

_Well. _

She lets him get away with it, but then the storyboard draws her eye and he panics. It's totally innocent. He really doesn't have much beyond major plot points.

And . . . _oh_. The picture of her in the Nikki Heat slot. That might not thrill her.

The picture is probably the worst of it, but he panics like she'll know he was prying. Thinking about prying. Except he wasn't. Because it's not prying, and he didn't even do it anyway.

He slapped the laptop closed and wheedled and pleaded until Alexis rolled her eyes and suited up for a laser tag battle. A distraction.

He didn't do it, but he panics anyway. Like she'll know.

He's annoyed by it. The panic. Briefly annoyed, because so what if she _did _know? It's not prying. He would have been completely within his rights. It's not like a Google search is some kind of epic invasion of privacy.

But he doesn't want her to know that he even thought about it, and there it is. The bad kind of frustration. He'd really like to kick that to the curb right now.

Because this is suddenly Fantasy Beckett perched on the edge of his desk.

Ok, one of the very _tame _versions of Fantasy Beckett.

And there's a little more of the not-fun frustration.

Because he legitimately has an actual Fantasy Beckett who qualifies just by showing up. By admitting she wants more than just a good ending. That she needs the story. For herself. For Melanie Cavanaugh's family. For that someday when her daughters will want to know what happened to their mother.

She qualifies by giving him anything at all.

* * *

He really, _really _doesn't know what this is.

They're back at Roger's apartment. Because she didn't just ask for his help, she took his advice. She _listened_.

And now all of a sudden, she's so _easy_.

This isn't just her forgetting herself. This is her playing along.

This is the good kind of frustration, and it's not just good for him.

_We are _not _married! _

It's so _immediate. _Like a reflex. And the absolute refusal to even _pretend_ to be married?Demanding a divorce? A _pretend_ divorce?

_So _easy.

And then it all comes together.

His lines in her mouth. His body moving through her crime scene. The two of them writing the story. Acting it out

It's like . . .

Well, it's like sex, isn't it?

If the good kind of frustration is foreplay, this is like really, _really _good sex with someone who already knows a hundred ways to make you scream and wants to find a hundred more in a hurry.

He swears she's playing along. That all of a sudden she's having a good time, too.

That she likes the way he makes her scream.

That she's gathering evidence because she wants to make _him _scream.

He doesn't know what this is at all, but he's in.

He is _so _in.

* * *

She drops him off.

He almost does something stupid. He's on the verge of several something stupids. _Somethings stupid?_

His hand is on the door of her cruiser, and there's nothing keeping him. Nothing except the fact that he's not ready for this to end. He's not ready to say goodnight and show up tomorrow and be back to the not-fun kind of frustration.

He wants this from her. More of whatever this whole night has been, and he has no idea how they even got here.

He's not ready for it to end, and there's a growing list stupid things on his mind. Each and every one seems like a better option than getting out of this car and letting her drive away. A better option than leaving her alone.

He almost asks her out again. Up for a drink. Or out. Out is better. No mothers, no mud masks, and no memory of his tragic case of laser tag head. Out. Wherever she wants. Whatever she wants, so long as this doesn't end.

He almost kisses her.

Almost tries to kiss her, anyway.

He thinks about trying to kiss her. Because whatever that was back at Roger's apartment—whatever this has been tonight—he's not at all confident that an attempted kiss at this point ends with all his body parts intact.

And then he almost dives right past all of that. Asking her out. Kissing her. He almost dives right past that and asks if she hasn't had enough of the foreplay. If this whole field trip was good for her, too. If she wants to climb into the back seat right now and make him scream.

That seems like the best option of all, and he wonders if it's something about her car. If there's a leak in the exhaust system that makes him stupid or something. Because the things he almost does are definitely getting progressively stupider and she's giving him an odd look.

She's raising her eyebrow and inclining her head toward his hand on the door.

He blurts out a goodnight and, of course, trips over the curb getting out. He doesn't quite go down. He jams his wrist catching himself on a fire hydrant.

She calls after him. She asks if he's ok, and it sounds exactly like an invitation to making her scream in the back seat, but he's reasonably sure that's only because he's stupid right now. He's reasonably sure she could be cursing his name and damning him and all his issue to the eternal fires of hell and, right now, it would still sound like an invitation to make her scream.

He shuts the door on her. He shuts the door on the stupid and heads down the street.

He makes the corner and looks back, just for a second. She's still sitting there. The car is idling and she's behind the wheel. She's staring down the street after him and he wonders why for a second. For a second, there's this little flare of hope that maybe she's thinking about stupid things, too.

But she puts the car in gear then and pulls away from the curb. She doesn't look at him as she passes. She keeps her eyes front and shakes her head a little.

He watches her go, anchored to his spot on the corner and hope sputters out.

She's not thinking about doing something stupid. She's passing by.

She's passing by and probably wondering why he just strode purposefully down the street, away from his building.

* * *

He runs with it. Almost literally. He doesn't turn around. He just keeps walking.

He's not ready to go home yet.

He's not ready to sit by, listening to his kid and his mother do the postmortem on Beckett's visit to the loft. He's not ready to fend off the speculation and not-so-subtle hints.

He's not ready to give up the buzz he still has going.

He's not ready for that at all.

It's late and a lot of the storefronts are dark. It's fine, though. It's mostly fine. He's not really looking for company.

He's not really looking for something to do, but he can't help but notice the crowd in front of one of the few places that's still lit up.

This storefront is neat, if a little run-down. There's a thrown-together stall on the sidewalk in front of the windows with a patio umbrella propped precariously above it. There's a young woman in slim-fitting black behind the counter pouring samples of something into minuscule plastic shot glasses.

He grabs one and downs it without thinking. Anything that comes in a shot glass seems like a good idea at the moment. Which probably means it's actually a really bad idea.

It's thick, whatever it is. Unexpectedly sweet, and at first it's unpleasant. It's too much up front and he makes a face. But then it settles on his tongue. It reaches the back corners of his mouth and he likes something about it.

The woman is in mid-patter. She has the unenviable task of grabbing the attention of Manhattanites with someplace better to be. He doesn't want to interrupt, but he's curious.

He gestures toward the bottle and she nods at him with a half smile. His fingers close around another tiny cup. He sips it this time. It's better that way. The sweetness makes more sense and he can taste other, subtler things underneath. Pleasant herbs and floral notes. Sharp spice that burns a little, but complements the sweetness.

It's better until he reaches for the bottle. He turns the label toward him and almost chokes.

It's simple, but well done. It has the no-nonsense look of something done in-house at a smallish business. The lone graphic is a pale blue full moon. Stamped above is the name of the winery—meadery actually—and below, a single word: DESIRE.

It jolts through him. His mind puts a name to it. That buzz and whatever this is. Whatever this has been since she showed up at the door. Whatever this has been for weeks.

It's not news. She's gorgeous. She's smart. She's ridiculously good at her job. She's annoyingly straitlaced at work and, he's starting to suspect, not _at all _that way off the clock.

He can make her scream and she frustrates the hell out of him in all kinds of ways.

Of course it's desire.

It shouldn't be news, but it shakes him somehow.

He takes a third shot and the woman behind the stall gives him a slightly dirty look.

He starts guiltily and wraps his hand around the bottle. He's fully prepared to buy it in penance, but his mind snags on something.

She's multitasking. Going on with her spiel and making sure that he's not some shady character looking to get very slowly lit on honey wine in teeny tiny cups. He hasn't been listening at all up to this point, but now he catches words like _story _and _legend _and _tradition._

She's talking about the mysterious origins of mead. How it shows up millennia ago all around the world and no one really knows who invented it or how it might have traveled so far and wide.

He knows this. Or he knew it and he'd forgotten it until now. Research for something he discarded a long while back. His brief flirtation with archaeology-based mystery, maybe.

He knows this, but he holds his breath. There's something else at the edge of his memory. Something that nags, and he thinks it's coming next.

It does.

It's bullshit. He remembers that now. Folk etymology about the term honeymoon coming from an ancient Babylonian tradition of a bride's father gifting the couple a month's worth of mead to ensure their first child would be a boy.

It's bullshit and he doesn't care a bit. It's a good story. It's a _great _story.

He grabs a bottle.

He grabs two.

Because Beckett needs a wedding present.

* * *

He's late the next morning.

He gets a little caught up in the wrapping. The store gave him one of those adorable rustic-looking paper bags with crimson ribbon handles. They swaddled the bottle in an impressive amount of tissue paper, but he wants to add something.

He rifles through his wrapping paper locker and wonders why he even has one. If it's normal or healthy for a man his age to have such a thing. If this is necessary in life for any human on the planet.

He pushes the thought aside, though, and hunts it down. A roll of silver foil paper with flocked velvet wedding bells. They smatter the paper two by two, joined together with linked rings at the top. Exactly what he wants.

He cuts a sheet and rolls the bottle in it. He gathers the excess into an artful spray of silvery paper around the neck. He cuts a handful of lengths of ribbon to tie it off and curls each one carefully with scissors.

By the time he restores the whole thing to its rustic tissue-paper-and-shopping-bag cocoon, he has a couple of annoyed texts from her.

He's late enough that he misses her at the precinct. He stands by her desk dithering. Another text comes in. The address of the delivery company with no comment.

He stares at the text, bag dangling from his fingers.

He hasn't really thought this part through. He sort of pictured himself waltzing in and dropping it on her desk without comment. Sinking into his chair—because it's _totally _his chair—with the smug smile he knows drives her the good kind of crazy.

He'd pictured himself just leaning back—a lot cooler and more composed than he's been around her in recent memory—waiting for her to open it. To sputter at him and be _so _easy. To get right back to the buzz from last night.

_We are _not_ married. _

That's what he'd sort of pictured, but he's late. She's already out, and he may not be entirely over his episode of stupid, but he knows it's a bad idea to show up a froofily wrapped "wedding present" when she's chasing down a lead.

He's at a loss, though. He doesn't want to just leave it on her desk, either.

He's about to tug open her desk drawer. The deep one at the bottom where she keeps a bag sometimes, but his hand shrinks back at the last second. He wasn't lying about the novelist's habit. He's an inveterate snoop. He's had no compunction at all about going through some seriously high-level underwear drawers, but he can't make himself do it. Not with her.

He straightens again and he doesn't even know what kind of frustration this is. If it's good or bad or foreplay or sex or an unlikely late-in-life conscience springing up.

His phone dings again. She's going to kill him if he doesn't catch up with her. And he wants to. More than he wants to play this little joke or whatever it is—more than he wants to pull her pigtails—he wants to catch up with her.

He wants the two of them to chase down the story. Together.

He spies her trash can then, and that will have to do. He slides the bag as far under his chair as it will go and nudges the trash can in front of it. He walks around the chair and eyeballs the arrangement from every angle. He ignores the odd stares he's getting from passersby in the bullpen. It'll have to do.

He goes to chase down the story.

He goes to catch her.

* * *

It's a long day. Both kinds of long.

He thinks for a minute like they might actually be out of there at a decent hour once they have Wyler doing the walk of shame down to lock up. He nudges her trash can and reassures himself that the bag is still there.

He picks up the case file and half listens to Beckett and Montgomery as his eyes wander over it. He's mostly stalling. He wants Montgomery to clear out so he can give it to her. The wedding present.

He's not sure _why _he wants Montgomery to clear out. It's funnier with an audience. It will drive her crazier with an audience. An audience will have her absolutely hell bent on making him scream. An audience is good.

But he waits anyway. He tosses a pun their way. Montgomery chuckles, and if he's not mistaken, Beckett only thinks about killing him for the briefest of seconds.

His heart kicks up a notch as Montgomery strolls away and she asks him to come with her. She wants him there when she gives the story to the Davidsons and that's . . . it's a lot more than he would have thought likely twenty-four hours ago.

He sets the file on the desk and reaches down for the bag. He has second thoughts about doing this right now. Frustrating second thoughts, but he can't count on coming back to the precinct after White Plains. He's stalling again, trying to make up his mind.

He hears himself say something about the woman with the freezer. He's thinking out loud, not even sure what he's getting at.

He half expects her to snap at him. It's a conversation that inches close to Sloan and that's still pegging her meter. It's still pissing her off.

But she doesn't snap at him. She's quieter about it. It seems to chafe a little less for her now that she's gotten the story that Melanie's parents deserve. That her daughters will want to have someday.

Only she hasn't gotten it. Not the whole story.

They both know it as soon as he says it.

_So, if you're not investigating a murder, why would you talk to the neighbor about a freezer delivery? _

She's quiet on the drive back to Roger's building. They both know already.

They trade off asking Mrs. Marsh questions. It's give and take like yesterday, but there's nothing fun about it. They both know it long before they turn to each other and the grim truth—the real ending—settles over them.

_Ben Davidson. _

_Melanie's dad. _

She doesn't ask if he's coming with her to White Plains. She points the car that way without comment, and he's grateful. Of course he's going with her. Of course he'll see this through.

There's a dreary kind of gratification in the fact that she doesn't even ask. In the fact that she sits motionless behind the wheel of her cruiser and there's nothing self-conscious about it. She might not be glad he's there—not exactly—but she doesn't mind, and that's something.

Their gazes turn in tandem to the neat lawn and the warm glow of lamplight through the dining room window.

She gives him a strange look when he speaks.

_You could just leave it like this. Sam's dead. The Captain's happy. Those kids look pretty happy._

He doesn't blame her. It sounds like a different version of him. On the surface, anyway. The words without context. That's the version of him she's used to. _Observation, provocation, reaction. _

But that's not how he means it. He's not trying to get inside her head. He doesn't care what Nikki would do. He wants . . . something. Some kind of satisfaction for her in this. But there's none to be had.

She seems to know it. That this isn't research. That he hates this ending as much as she does, that's all. She seems to know. Maybe that's why she's looking at him strangely.

She makes her own answer and goes to the door.

Alone.

* * *

It's a long day.

Ben Davidson's interrogation is terrible.

It's terrible how easy it is to see what drove him. The compelling logic of awful circumstance.

It's terrible to see how she understands. She doesn't have to imagine what he's going through. She understands this man all too well.

It's terrible that Davidson is so composed about it. So calculating now. That love for his daughter may have prompted him at first, but it turned into something else along the way. Something grim and cold and passionless.

It's terrible to see him, alone and self-contained. The only state possible for him to do right by his family.

Beckett understands that, too. It's familiar to her. It's terrible.

It shakes him. He slips off to call Alexis. Tells himself that Beckett might need a minute, but the lie isn't particularly convincing. Not even to himself.

But she smiles at him when he tells the other lie. That Alexis missed him. That his Spidey-sense was tingling.

She smiles and then the story is spilling out of her. She's laying it at his feet.

He hasn't pushed a button. He hasn't asked or commented or cajoled. He hasn't done a damned thing and she's telling him.

It's so little. A handful of sentences, brusque and factual, but she's bleeding.

He asks about the watch. He doesn't want to. He hasn't planned to. She's already bleeding, but the question makes its way out of him somehow. _Observation, provocation, reaction. _

She answers right away. Like she was expecting it, even if he wasn't.

He hears the word _sober_ and suddenly remembers the bag. He hates himself.

It's messy and immediate and the panic of it occupies his entire field of vision.

He realizes he doesn't even know if she drinks. He realizes he doesn't know the first thing about her.

Shame burns his cheeks. It drags his gaze down for just a second to where the bag sits at his feet and then back up, but she's pulling the ring from beneath her shirt. She's bleeding and she doesn't notice.

He can't move when she's done. When she makes the first joke and he responds in kind. He can't move.

She's going and he hates that. She's standing there alone and he thinks she doesn't have to be. He thinks that if he took a step toward her right now—if he could keep from doing something stupid—he might find himself on the right side of the boundary around her.

But he doesn't know how. He doesn't know the first thing about her and every single thing he might do is stupid.

She's going and it's all he can do to answer back when she razzes him about his flowery goodbyes.

It's all he can do to snipe back that _Night _is boring.

It's all he can do to choke out the word _Hopeful _and move an inch closer to where she lives.

Absolutely alone in some nameless state.

* * *

He sits motionless next to her desk for . . . he doesn't know how long.

He's bleeding a little, too. More than a little.

He reaches down for the bag. When he rights himself, Esposito appears in the deserted bullpen. They almost give one another a heart attack.

He kind of wishes they had.

He's raw from it all.

He's raw from the case and the way the right thing and the thing she had to do are so far from one another.

He's raw from her confession. The fact that he's wanted it from her all along. The backstory. That he has it now—from her own lips—and it's still so little.

Not because it's all she'd give him. Because it's all she has.

He's raw because he's had enough of the gap between how things are and how they ought to be.

He asks Esposito, and even while the words are coming out of his mouth, he has no idea how he feels about that.

If it's a mistake.

If it was inevitable.

If it's about him or her.

If he just doesn't want her to be alone.

If what he wants should have anything to do with this at all.

He asks Esposito, and he doesn't expect what comes next. He doesn't expect the hard look and the wordless motion to follow him.

He doesn't expect to find himself in the basement of precinct, hunched at a rickety table, poring over the file by the light of a bare bulb. He doesn't expect to be staggered by photos of a woman who looks so much like her and not like her at all.

He doesn't expect the tight-lipped threats from Esposito, but that answers one thing.

This is a mistake. She doesn't want him to ask. She doesn't want anyone to ask.

He can't stop now, but it's a mistake.

He doesn't expect Esposito to wish him luck.

He doesn't know what he expected, but none of this is it.

He doesn't know how he feels about any of it.

He handles the file long after he's committed it to memory. After he's snapped careful photos of every individual piece and close-ups of even more.

There's so little of it and he can't get over it. That something so awful can be contained like this. A few thin sheets clipped together and no weight at all.

It's a long time before he shakes himself. Before he forces himself through each individual step. Closing the folder. Sliding it back home in the file box and muscling the overstuffed cardboard on to the shelf.

It's a long time before he snaps off the light and flinches as the gate rings shut behind him.

It's late when he climbs the stairs and pushes his way out on to the street.

He should have called a car. He should at least try for a cab, but he hates the thought of the close confines right now.

He hates the though of being in another car. He's not having great luck with them lately.

He walks, even though it's stupid. He walks and his mind wanders. It's heavy and churning and he doesn't know what comes next.

It's probably frustrating. The bad kind of frustrating. But he feels distant from it. Far away and alone.

He almost bumps into the remains of the stall in front of the wine store. It's empty now and the windows are dark. He blinks down at his own hand, surprised to find the bag still there.

He turns away from the storefront.

His feet take him the rest of the way home. They take him across the lobby, down the hallway, and through the mercifully darkened loft.

He's all the way at the back of his closet before he wonders what he's even doing. He's hoisting the bag up on to the highest shelf. He's finding the darkest corner and shoving the bag back and back.

It's done before he wonders what on earth he's going to do with it. When the moment is gone. When that buzzing high was a million years ago and he might have imagined it anyway. He might have imagined her playing along.

It's done before he wonders what kind of frustration this is.


End file.
